The funeral will be held in Mr Karimov’s home city of Samarkand on Saturday as the country begins three days of mourning, the statement said, with Uzbekistan now facing its greatest period of uncertainty in its post-Soviet history.
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Karimov, who had served as president of the newly independent republic since 1991, suffered a brain haemorrhage on Saturday.
Updated | Speculation that Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov is dead continues to mount as the Turkish government sent condolences and Russian news agency Interfax published a statement from the country’s cabinet of ministers, announcing his death on Friday.
Karimov, one of Asia’s most autocratic leaders, ruled Uzbekistan for 27 years. Further details of his death were not immediately available from the mostly opaque country, where media freedom and human rights have been harshly repressed.
Karimov’s death leaves a power vacuum in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country, with no apparent successor having been chosen.
Loyalist Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev was head of the organising committee for the funeral, in a sign that he could be the front runner to take over long term from Mr Karimov.
Uzbek President Islam Karimov died on Friday, the Uzbekistan government and parliament said in a joint statement.
“The death of Islam Karimov may open a pretty unsafe period of unpredictability and uncertainty in Uzbekistan”, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Tass news agency on Friday.
Karimov remained the Uzbek president for 26 years.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the presidents of ex-Soviet Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were among dignitaries attending the memorial service on the famed UNESCO World Heritage Registan square.
The United Nations describes the use of torture in Uzbekistan as systematic, and Reporters Without Borders said Karimov frequently broke his own records for repression and paranoia.
At 72 the former KGB officer may not take the top job himself but the long-time Karimov ally looks likely to have a decisive say in who does.
It is suggested a hint at a successor may come if and when the government announces their president’s death.
In the Uzbek city of Andizhan in May 2005, security forces killed around 500 mostly unarmed people who had been protesting against local officials, witnesses and rights groups said.
He became President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic on 24th March 1990.
Islam Karimov was born in Samarkand, the ancient Silk Road city in eastern Uzbekistan, in 1938, at the height of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s purges.
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Karimov’s body was then loaded by soldiers onto an aircraft bound for Samarkand in front of his black-clad widow and youngest daughter.
