Dozens killed in riot at Tajikistan prison holding Isis militants

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Three prison guards and 29 inmates die in violence at 1,500-capacity jail in Vahdat

Barbed wire fencing at a prison

Three guards and 29 prisoners have been killed in a riot at a high-security jail in Tajikistan that holds Islamic State fighters, the country’s justice ministry has said.

The ministry said the violence had begun late on Sunday at the prison in Vahdat, 13 miles (21km) east of the capital, Dushanbe, as militants armed themselves with knives and killed the guards and five fellow prisoners.

One of the instigators of the riot was Bekhruz Gulmurod, a son of Gulmurod Khalimov, a Tajik special forces colonel who defected to Isis in 2015 and has since been killed in Syria, according to the ministry.

It said security forces had killed 24 militants and restored order in the prison, which holds 1,500 inmates.

Isis, which at one point controlled swathes of land in Syria and Iraq, claimed responsibility for another Tajik prison riot in November, which followed a deadly attack on western tourists in July.

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Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/tajikistan-prison-riot-guards-inmates-killed-isis-militants


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