MOSCOW, September 3 (RIA Novosti) – A coal mine director was reportedly shot to death in an eastern town in Tajikistan, an impoverished ex-Soviet nation that has been mired in perennial disputes with its Central Asian neighbors over energy supplies.
Unidentified armed assailants shot Nuriddin Temirov in the head and chest in his office in the town of Garm late Sunday, a police spokesman told the Asia Plus news agency Tuesday.
Temirov has headed the Nazarailok anthracite mine for six years, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
It quoted local residents as saying that part of the mine was allegedly controlled by a former warlord who fought against the military forces of President Emomali Rakhmon’s government during the 1992-97 civil war in Tajikistan.
Coal is a much-needed commodity in the mountainous nation of almost 9 million that has faced chronic shortages of natural gas and electricity, mostly supplied from neighboring Uzbekistan, since the 1991 Soviet collapse, RFE/RL said.
