A schoolteacher in Uzbekistan has been dismissed after a video that appears to show her threatening and striking pupils was posted on the Internet, an education official says.
The mobile phone video posted on March 16 shows a primary school teacher shouting in a nearly three-minute rant in a classroom, calling the children "animals" and appearing to hit at least two of them with a textbook.
"I’ll kill you if you keep staring at me," the teacher says at one point.
An official in the education department of the Ferghana provincial government said that the video was recorded at a state school in the eastern region in February.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, the official said that the teacher has been dismissed and a criminal investigation opened.
It is unclear who recorded and posted the video online.
The incident came weeks after state media in the tightly controlled country released footage showing a nursery-school employee in the southern Surkhandaryo province beating and berating children and threatening them with a knife.
Surkhandaryo authorities said that at least three employees have been jailed and several other officials were dismissed in connection with that incident.
