A car bomb exploded outside a ministry in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, killing the driver, and fire broke out in another of the ex-Soviet state's government buildings on Monday, a security source and witnesses said. The Foreign Ministry of Tajikistan, which holds parliamentary elections next month and has been relatively stable since a civil war involving Islamists that ended in 1997, said the car blast and the fire were accidents.
The ministry said "initial information" suggested the car's liquid gas fuel tank exploded, while a fire in the Security Ministry - formerly the KGB - was due to an electrical fault.
But a senior law enforcement official told Reuters: "Of course it's a terrorist act. The power of the explosion was roughly equivalent to a kilogram of TNT and that cannot be accounted for by a liquid gas fuel tank."
A man's head lay on the street outside the Emergencies Ministry amid the blackened, twisted wreckage of a car shortly after a powerful blast was heard at 10:30 am (0530 GMT). Hours later the Security Ministry caught fire.
Both ministries are within a kilometre (mile) of the palace of President Imomali Rakhmonov, who has held power since the 1992-1997 civil war that pitted his Moscow-backed administration against an Islamist opposition and killed more than 100,000.
The violence comes as Tajikistan prepares to hold a parliamentary vote on February 27.
The law enforcement official said it was not clear who had carried out the car bombing or why but noted that the Emergencies Ministry was also near the Military Prosecutor's Office and state bank Amonatbank.
The military prosecutor is investigating corruption among senior officials while Rakhmonov on Sunday fired the senior management of Amonatbank for alleged corruption.
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