DUSHANBE, March 10, 2016, Asia-Plus – One Afghan armed drug trafficker has been killed and two others have been wounded in the shootout on the Tajik-Afghan border in Khatlon province.
Mohammad Ulughkhojayev, a spokesman for the Main Border Guard Directorate at the State Committee for National Security (SCNS), says the incident took place in the area controlled by the Hamadoni border unit on March 9 at 11:30 pm.
According to him, border guards on a routine patrol spotted and tried to detain six or seven armed persons who were illegally crossing the border river.
Ulughkhojayev says the trespassers were residents of the Afghan province of Takhor.
As a result of the clash, one of the trespassers was killed and two others were wounded. More than 50 kilograms of hashish and one Kalashnikov assault rifle were found on the spot.
It is already the third deadly clash along the Tajik-Afghan border over the past five days.
One afghan drug trafficker was killed on the Khorog stretch of Tajikistan’s common border with Afghanistan on March 7. The trespasser was reportedly killed while resisting arrest. A package of narcotic drug that tested positive to hashish weighing 4 kilograms and a pistol were found on the spot.
A statement released by the Main Border Guard Directorate on March 7 says that Tajik border guards killed a member of an armed group who had crossed over from Afghanistan and lost an officer during a clash along the border that took place near the “Panj” frontier post on March 5.
The clash reportedly occurred as a nine-man armed group, led by an Afghan citizen called Mirafzal waladi Arbab Sherafzal, was seeking to covertly filter into Tajikistan.
One of the trespassers, named as Mulla Fashiddin waladi Qurbon, and one border guard, Warrant Officer Suhrob Safolov, were killed in the shootout, the statement said.
The trespassers reportedly crossed over from Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province.
Meanwhile, Afghan media sources report armed trespassers that illegally crossed into Tajik territory last Saturday are members of the Taliban movement. The head of the Imam-Sahib district told
Radio Liberty
that Mirafzal is a well-known local drug trafficker who has pledged allegiance to the Taliban, the official said. Taliban militants reportedly now control 30 percent of territory of the Imam-Sahib district in Kunduz province.
