134 Other people were injured in the Batken Oblast, in southwest Kyrgyzstan, on the border between the two countries.
Le Monde with AFP
Kyrgyzstan announced, Sunday, September 18, the death of twelve additional people during border clashes with Tajikistan this week. This new assessment brings to thirty-six the number of Kyrgyz killed during these violence between these two countries of Central Asia.
These thirty-six people were killed “in the Batken oblast”,
Faced with this grip of violence, the worst since April 2021, the two countries have agreed in an emergency, Friday, September 16, of a cease-fire. They then accused each other of having violated him several times.
Sunday morning, Kyrgyz border guards nevertheless said that the night had happened “calmly, without incident”, while noting that the situation remained “tense” on the border in the oblasts of OCH and Batken. “The leaders of the two countries take all the necessary measures to stabilize the situation, stop all climbing and provocations (…) peacefully,” they said.
a theater of regular fighting
On Saturday, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres called officials from both camps by telephone “to promote a dialogue for a lasting ceasefire,” said a United Nations spokesperson.
Saturday morning, the interior ministry Tadjik announced that civilians had been killed in Tajikistan during violations of the truce, without specifying their number. Shots between the two countries earlier this week had already caused the death of two TAJIKS border guards and made injured.
The border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan is the scene of regular fights. Almost half of the 970 kilometers of the common border has been disputed since the dislocation of the USSR, against a background of tensions for access to resources.
In April 2021, violence had killed more than fifty people and lets fear conflict on a larger scale.