Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has ordered troops and police to cease fire in the town of Khorog in Tajikstan’s restive Badakhshan region, with authorities starting talks with militants after gun battles have left at least 40 dead, a local official said on Wednesday.
At least 30 militants were killed with another 40 arrested on Tuesday during a special operation against an armed group believed to be linked to the murder of a senior Tajik security official. Twelve Tajik security officers were killed and another 25 injured during the operation.
“The ceasefire would allow us to search for wounded and clear the streets of decomposing bodies,” Governor of Badakhshan region, Kodiri Kosim, said at a meeting with local residents.
A special commission comprising leaders of the local community will be set up to determine if there were civilian casualties during the clashes.
Tajik authorities on Wednesday started talks with representatives of the militant group led by local warlord Tolib Ayombekov, which has been involved in drug smuggling and has also carried out a series of killings in the mountainous region bordering with Afghanistan.
The group is believed to be behind the murder of Maj. Gen. Abdullo Nazarov, chief of the Tajikistan National Security Committee regional office, on June 21.
His car was stopped by a group of unidentified persons several kilometers from Khorog, he was pulled out of the car and stabbed several times. The general died on the way to hospital.
Tajik opposition sources are reporting hundreds of civilian casualties and claim that Nazarov’s murder, and the recent attacks on government officials, have been used by Tajik authorities as a pretext for an ethnic cleansing campaign, and an attempt to reestablish control over the region which has long been known as a fiefdom of local warlords.
Afghanistan tightened security on the border with Tajikistan on Wednesday to ensure stability and prevent any attempts to escalate violence in the region that remains volatile 15 years after a civil war.
The five-year civil war between the Moscow-backed government and the Islamist-led opposition, in which up to 50,000 people were killed, ended in 1997 with a United Nations-brokered peace agreement.
The Badakhshan region was one of the key strongholds of the opposition during the war.
