Tajik government forces Wednesday declared a temporary ceasefire to allow for talks in a deadly operation to reassert government control in the south-east over militants loyal to an ex-warlord. The talks involved Tajik Defence Minister Sherali Khayrulloyev and representatives of the town of Khorog that was the focus of this week's deadly clashes, a military source told AFP.
The initial truce was only supposed to last four hours to the early afternoon, but there were no reports of further fighting and the Tajik independent news site Asia Plus said Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon had ordered that the truce would be permanent. The presidency in Dushanbe said it was unable to immediately confirm the reports.
According to Asia Plus, the head of the Badakhshan region Kodir Kosim read a message from Rakhmon to inhabitants, saying that the ceasefire would be indefinite to ensure the evacuation of wounded and dead whose bodies risked "decomposing in the streets".
According to the official toll, 12 government troops and 30 militants have been killed in the military operation close to the Afghan border which was launched after the murder of a top security agent at the weekend. However some local media suggested the toll was sharply higher, although the security service insisted that there were no civilian casualties. Asia Plus said that at least 20 civilians had been killed. The violence in the Pamir Mountains region was the worst internal unrest for two years in Tajikistan, the ex-Soviet Union's poorest state that borders Afghanistan and China and is still recovering from a 1992-97 civil war.
The government blamed Tolib Ayombekov, a former warlord from the civil war, for the murder on Saturday of regional security chief General Abdullo Nazarov who was stabbed to death after being dragged from his car. It accused Ayombekov, who had been the head of a border guards unit, of running an organised crime group that smuggled drugs and precious stones into Tajikistan over the Afghan border and was behind a series of killings.
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