Tajik forces declare ceasefire after deadly clashes

Tajik government forces Wednesday declared a temporary ceasefire to allow for talks in a deadly operation to reassert government control in the southeast over militants loyal to an ex-warlord. The talks involved Tajik Defense 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. 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 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. The military official told AFP that in the truce talks the government side was demanding the handover of four suspects wanted for the murder of Nazarov. The talks also called for attempts to specify the exact number of casualties from the fighting and for the wounded to be evacuated from the area which has been cut off from the rest of Tajikistan during the operation. Meanwhile, Tajikistan's top military prosecutor Khayrullo Saidov -- who was sent to the region to investigate the Nazarov murder -- was wounded in an attack and flown back to Dushanbe for treatment, military sources said. The thinly-populated Badakhshan region, making up almost half of Tajikistan, is one of its poorest areas and has long been notorious as a fiefdom of local strongmen, many of whom fought as rebels in the civil war. Tajik media said all shops in Khorog were closed, the market was shut and all state offices except the police were not working while dozens of houses were lying in ruins. Access in and out of the region was blocked while the operation was underway, with only military vehicles circulating and the only flights by helicopters that were ferrying the wounded and the dead to Dushanbe. The unrest appears to be the most serious security challenge for the secular regime of Rakhmon since the security forces suffered repeated attacks by militants in the Rasht Valley in the summer of 2010. That violence followed the escape of 25 militants from a prison in a brazen night time jailbreak in August 2010 that saw almost 40 members of the security forces killed.