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.