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A view shows a burnt armored personnel carrier of Kyrgyz forces near Golovnoi water distribution facility outside the village of Kok-Tash in Batken province, Kyrgyzstan, May 5, 2021. |
At least three people have died and 27 have been injured in combat along the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan since it started two days ago. On Friday, the two countries leveled accusations against one another for employing heavy weapons including tanks and mortars.
The Tajik military reportedly used tanks, armored personnel carriers, and mortars to fire on several of Kyrgyzstan's outposts early on Friday in the disputed mountainous border region.
In response, Tajikistan accused Kyrgyz forces of using "heavy weapons" to shell an outpost and seven villages in the same region, which is renowned for its complex political and ethnic geography and was the scene of similar conflicts last year that almost sparked a war.
According to officials in the Tajik city of Isfara, one person was killed and three others were wounded. In its southern Batken province, which borders Tajikistan's northern Sughd area and has a Tajik exclave, Vorukh, a significant flashpoint in recent confrontations, Kyrgyzstan reported 18 injured throughout the course of the previous night.
The Bishkek administration said that the Kyrgyz and Tajik foreign ministers had addressed the issue, but the border guard service claimed that two ceasefire agreements had previously fallen through.
In an additional effort to resolve the disagreement, the governors of the bordering Kyrgyz and Tajik regions were scheduled to meet at a border crossing site, according to Kyrgyz border guards.
Separately, the national security service of Kyrgyzstan said that its chief was speaking with his Tajik counterpart and that the level of fire was decreasing.
Satyr Japarov of Kyrgyzstan and Emomali Rakhmon of Tajikistan are both presidents, and both are shown with other leaders in a group photo shot at dinner on Thursday. They are both in Uzbekistan for a meeting on regional security.
Conflicts over the ill-defined boundary between the two former Soviet republics are common but often defuse swiftly, though last year they came dangerously close to escalating into a full-scale conflict.
Both are home to Russian military installations and have tight connections with Moscow, which this week called for an end to hostilities.
As members of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan's governments were in contact on Friday, according to the organization's leadership.
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