Kyrgyzstan's interim leader Roza Otunbayeva flew to the country's south Friday in a bid to calm tensions after admitting the death toll in ethnic clashes may be ten times higher than official figures.
A senior US envoy meanwhile urged an independent investigation into the clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that officials say killed nearly 200 people and forced tens of thousands from their homes.
The World Health Organisation said Friday that it was working on a worst-case estimate that the crisis could affect up to one million people, 300,000 of whom could be refugees.
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Otunbayeva, wearing a bullet-proof vest and accompanied by a heavy security detail, landed by helicopter for her first visit to the devastated city of Osh since the unrest began nearly a week ago, an AFP correspondent reported.
"I came here to see, to speak with the people and hear firsthand what happened here. We will do everything to rebuild this city," Otunbayeva said before a handful of people on the main square.
In an interview ahead of her trip, Otunbayeva admitted that the official death toll, which the health ministry said Friday had reached 192, was vastly underestimated.
"I would multiply by ten times the official figures," she said in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant published Friday.
"There were very many deaths in the countryside, and our customs dictate that we bury our dead right away, before sunset," meaning that many bodies were buried before deaths could be registered with authorities, she said.
On a visit to Uzbekistan's border region of Andijan Friday, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian affairs Robert Blake said an independent probe should be conducted into the violence.
"I think it's important that there be an investigation... but given the large number of ethnic Uzbek refugees here in Uzbekistan whose stories need to be heard, the Kyrgyz investigation needs to be accompanied by an investigation by an independent body," he told AFP by telephone.
In Osh, Otunbayeva defended her government from criticism that it had been unable to contain the ethnic bloodshed and to cope with the escalating humanitarian crisis.
"Leave us some hope! Stop saying that we are not working," she said. "Our forces say that they are coping."
The provisional government, which seized power in an April uprising, has insisted it is in control of the situation.
During her visit, Otunbayeva stayed away from the city's devastated Uzbek neighbourhoods -- many of which were burnt to the ground amid the worst of the ethnic bloodshed.
Victims of the unrest have told AFP that the violence was a brutal and orchestrated campaign by armed militias of ethnic Kyrgyz targeting their Uzbek neighbours.
But Otunbayeva played down the scale of animosity between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that fueled the clashes.
"We have always lived together and we always will live together," she said.
Foreign aid is being rushed to those displaced by the violence.
"We are working with a planning figure of one million people that have been directly or indirectly affected by this event -- 300,000 of them ... refugees," said in Geneva Giuseppe Annunziata, WHO coordinator for emergency programme support.
The UN health agency official confirmed when asked that the figures were a "worst-case scenario" and that the remaining 700,000 are people who could be displaced within Kyrgyzstan by the conflict.
The riots were the worst inter-ethnic clashes to hit the impoverished Central Asian state since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Uzbeks make up 14 percent of Kyrgyzstan's population of 5.3 million.
