Tajikistan was on high alert Monday after the government blamed Islamist militants for the deaths of at least 25 soldiers in the latest in a string of attacks to hit the volatile Central Asian state.
The deadliest attack this year occurred Sunday when insurgents ambushed a military convoy in the mountainous Rasht Valley region some 250 kilometres (150 miles) east of the capital Dushanbe.
"According to information from the troops, the number of dead as of this morning is 25 soldiers, with up to 20 injured, some of them critically," a senior Tajik military officer told AFP under condition of anonymity.
The defence ministry said in a statement earlier that 23 troops had been killed and another 10 wounded.
The ministry pinned the attack on an international "terrorist" group led by a charismatic former Tajik civil war commander called Mullo Abdullo, who is believed to have entered the country from his safe haven in Afghanistan.
"In addition to Tajik citizens, the terrorist group also contained militants and mercenaries including citizens of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Chechnya in Russia," defence ministry spokesman Faridun Makhmadaliyev said.
"These fighters, using the ideas of the Islamic faith as cover, wanted to turn Tajikistan into an arena for their internecine war by gathering radical underground groups around them," he added.
President Emomali Rakhmon, in New York for the UN General Assembly, told his government to take all measures necessary to "normalise the situation in this part of the country", a government statement said.
Special operation launched
The defence ministry said it had launched a sweeping military operation in response to the attack, sending in special forces and helicopter gunships to a region long thought to serve as a haven for Islamist militants.
"We've begun a sweep of this vast mountainous area to detect the militants and either detain or destroy them," Makhmadaliyev said.
Tajikistan, a majority-Muslim country and the poorest state to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly two decades ago, has suffered a string of recent attacks that the government blames on Islamist militants.
In August, 25 Al-Qaeda-linked militants escaped from a prison in a brazen nighttime getaway that killed six guards. They were believed to have been headed towards the Rasht Valley region where the latest attack occurred.
Since then, two more attacks have been carried out: a suicide bombing against a police station in Khujand that killed two people and wounded 25, and a bomb explosion in a Dushanbe disco that wounded seven.
A shadowy group calling itself Jamaat Ansarullah said it had carried out the bombing in the northern city of Khujand to avenge attacks against Muslims, raising fears of a campaign of violence by international militant groups
Pan Central-Asian links
Tajik authorities blame the attacks on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a militant group affiliated with Al-Qaeda that is branded a "terrorist" organisation by the United States.
The IMU was founded in the late-1990s in Tajikistan with the goal of overthrowing Uzbek President Islam Karimov and creating an Islamic Sharia law state in the ex-Soviet republic.
The group later moved to northern Afghanistan under the Taliban regime and was thought to have been depleted during NATO's fierce bombing campaign at the opening of the US-led invasion of that country in 2001.
Although its wild mountain regions have been an incubator for groups like the IMU, Tajikistan has largely dodged the fate of its war-wracked neighbour.
But Central Asia watchers have long warned about the possibility of spill-over from the conflict raging in Afghanistan, with which Tajikistan shares a porous 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) border.
