Tashkent, Sunday
FRESH fighting was reported today near Tajikistan's besieged capital
Dushanbe and authorities were investigating an alleged massacre at a
refugee camp near the border with Afghanistan.
The central Asian republic's coalition of Muslim radicals and
democrats said pro-communist fighters had launched an attack on a town
to the southeast of Dushanbe, killing and wounding many people.
Tajik radio, controlled by the coalition, said fighters loyal to
former parliamentary chairman Sararali Kenjayev, a communist, had
attacked the town of Yavan about 25 miles southeast of Dushanbe.
Hundreds of people have died in a power struggle following the ousting
in September of President Rakhmon Nabiyev in this former Soviet
republic, where decades of communist rule ended in May when a Muslim-led
coalition took power.
A spokesman for the Tajik state security committee, Sayit Omar
Rajabov, said today parliament had ordered an investigation into the
reported refugee camp massacre, but could not confirm when or if an
attack on refugees had taken place.
Rajabov, who spoke by telephone from Dushanbe, had no information on
casualties. ''We have heard of the reported massacre but we have no
official confirmation. Our office has started the investigation,'' he
told Reuters.
A United Nations official in the region said thousands of refugees
were stranded near the Tajik border with Afghanistan after fleeing the
Shartuz district, where he said the massacre was alleged to have taken
place on November 12.
The independent Russian news agency Nega said that as many as 800
people may have been ''killed or wounded'' in the attack by unidentified
well-armed groups near the border with Afghanistan. It did not say when
the attack took place.
Geldolph Evers, regional representative of the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR), said he interviewed two refugees from the area
this week in the Uzbek town of Termez, just across the border.
The refugees spoke of at least 50 people killed, including children
and pregnant women, in an attack by what they described as ''armed
bandits'' equipped with a tank and heavy machineguns.
Reporting on the attack on Yavan, Tajik radio said: ''As a result of
this criminal act, people were killed and wounded. Government buildings
were damaged in the district. Later innumerable refugees entered the
Kafarniyan district from the Yavan district.''
An army of about 3000 men supporting a loose coalition of Muslim
activists and democrats that was forced to resign earlier this month are
still holding Dushanbe in spite of gains across the Central Asian state
by pro-communist fighters.
But they appear to have been outflanked politically by the
pro-communists who reasserted their power at a parliamentary meeting in
the northern town of Khojand and are expected to dominate a new
government to be formed later this week.
The parliament, meeting for the past week in Khojand, has called for
talks between leaders of the rival armed groups.
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