Armed group attacks border guards, kill at least five people

An unidentified armed group attacked a Tajik check-point and a customs post in Kyrgyzstan early on Friday morning, shooting dead four soldiers and one civilian, representatives from both countries said. "At 2:30 AM local time a group of at least six people from Kyrgyzstan attacked the Tajik check-point in Lakon near Isfara town in Soghd area,” an official statement by the Tajik Ministry of Internal Affairs said, reporting that two Tajik soldiers had been killed and one more injured. "Then on Kyrgyz territory, the group seized a Mercedes killing its driver,” the ministry added. The group then reportedly attacked the Kyrgyz check-point at Pulgon on the way to Osh, the country’s second largest city, killing two border guards and injuring one more. "The armed group could consist of drug couriers, criminals or religious extremists", Usen Pulotov, a Kyrgyz border protection committee official, told journalists immediately after the attack. While officials in Tajikistan have yet to comment on who might be behind the attacks, some believe it may be the work of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Established in 1998, according to the US State Department, the IMU is a group of Islamic militants from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states, closely affiliated with Al-Qaeda, who have embraced Osama Bin Ladin’s anti-US, anti-Western agenda. The IMU also remains committed to its original goals of overthrowing Uzbek President Islam Karimov and establishing an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. In 1999-2000 in the mountains of the Kyrgyz province of Batken, authorities in that country conducted large scale operations against IMU members trying to enter Uzbekistan from Afghanistan, seen by many as major drug trafficking route on the way to Russia. Tashkent blamed the 13 May 2005 bloody uprising in Andijan, on the border with Kyrgyzstan, on Islamic extremist groups linked to international terrorist organisations. Up to 1,000 protesters may have been killed by security forces and police according to some rights groups – an incident that marks its one year anniversary on Saturday. According to the Russian news and information agency RIA Novosti, Tajikistan has stepped up security along its 870 km border with Kyrgyzstan. "More personnel have been deployed at all border and customs posts along the Tajik-Kyrgyz border, and control over cars and people crossing the border has been toughened," the Tajik border officials were quoted as saying. The Kyrgyz authorities were also sending troops into the area, the report added.