Kyrgyzstan’s border guards fired shots at one another.
Early Monday morning, a gunfight broke out at the border of Kyrgyzstan & Tajikistan. At least one soldier was killed and several were injured.
Both former Soviet republics traded blame, with Tajik Border Service claiming that Kyrgyz troops fired on its troops with machine guns and rifles. “without any reason.”
The report added that one Tajik soldier had been killed in clashes and two more were wounded.
Kyrgyzstan claimed that one of its patrols encountered a unit of Tajik troops in an area where they shouldn’t have been, in line with earlier agreements between Bishkek and Dushanbe.
“Ignoring the legitimate demands of the Kyrgyz side to withdraw from the area, the Tajik border guards opened fire,”According to the Kyrgyz Border Guards press service, RIA Novosti was informed by them.
According to preliminary data, the shootout, in which mortars were also used, didn’t result in any fatalities or injuries among Kyrgyz troops, it said.
The tensions between these two Central Asian nations can flare up from time-to-time because they cannot agree on the 1,000km long border in certain areas.
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There were also clashes on the border between two other former Soviet republics – Azerbaijan and Armenia – on Monday, with the sides losing around 50 troops each. Baku has been fighting Yerevan over Nagorno Karabakh since the beginning of the 1990s.
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