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AT LEAST 31 people were wounded in border clashes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan today.
The central Asian countries, both former Soviet republics, each blamed the other for the outbreak of violence.
Kyrgyz border guards said Tajikistan had attacked with mortars, tanks and armoured vehicles and shelled an airport at Bakten with rockets.
Tajik officials said the Kyrgyz side had subjected border villages to “intensive mortar bombardment and shelling … from all types of heavy weaponry.”
Tajik authorities said they proposed negotiations and a ceasefire, but Kyrgyz troops reportedly ignored the offers.
A previous border clash in 2021 in a dispute over water rights killed 55 people.
The clashes are the second conflict between former Soviet Union republics to turn violent in a week, following a brief but bloody exchange between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and take place as the two largest former republics by population, Russia and Ukraine, approach their seventh month at war.
