Around 120,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in an area of Kyrgyzstan where fierce fighting is ongoing against forces from neighboring Tajikistan, a senior Kyrgyz government official has said, writes eurasianet.org.

Marufkhan Tulayev, the first deputy presidential plenipotentiary representative to the Batken region, said residents of numerous villages in the Batken and Leilek districts were able to transit out of the area through Sokh, an enclave belonging to Uzbekistan.

Heavy exchanges of gunfire and shelling raged throughout the day in locations up to 80 kilometers apart. There was a brief respite in the afternoon, around the same time as the presidents of the two nations were meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that took place in the Uzbek city of Samarkand.

The Kyrgyz Health Ministry says at least 55 people have been injured during the clashes and that most of the casualties are being treated for gunshot and shrapnel wounds. A 15-year-old girl in the Kyrgyz village of Dostuk died as a result of shelling, officials said.

Tajik officials have issued few public statements, and when they have, it has mostly been to blame Kyrgyzstan for triggering the unrest.

Tajiks have had to rely on social media to get some sense of the toll of the unrest on civilians. One piece of footage shared via Telegram showed five people in civilian clothing killed in the Tajik enclave of Vorukh, which is surrounded by Kyrgyz land. It is uncertain how they were killed, although the nature of some of the wounds suggest gunfire.