DUSHANBE. Aug 14 (Interfax) - Two leaders of the Tajik wing of the Jamaat Ansarullah extremist religious organization have been killed in the Afghan Badakhshan province, the Radio Liberty Tajik Service reported on Thursday.
Terrorists, including two citizens of Tajikistan - the leaders of the Jamaat Ansarullah Tajik wing - were killed in an air strike by governmental forces at the Fargomir populated locality, the radio quoted head of the Badakhshan security service command staff Abduqadir Sayyed as saying.
The Afghan province of Badakhshan borders Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region.
Government airplanes also bombed a location of the Taliban and its supporters in the Hustaq Gorge in the northern Afghan Jurm district and six extremists died, the radio said.
Jamaat Ansarullah became known in Tajikistan in September 2010 when a mined GAZ-24 car rammed the building of the Sughd region police department on organized crime in Khujand, the second biggest city in Tajikistan. The suicide bomber killed two police officers and wounded at least 20.
The Tajik authorities believe Jamaat Ansarullah is a wing of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan which operates in the Fergana Valley, divided between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Suspected members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan are most frequently captured in northern Tajikistan, in the Sughd region.
The Interior Ministry said 48 members of terrorist organizations, among them 31 members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and 17 members of Jamaat Ansarullah, were detained last year. A court in the northern Sughd district convicted six Jamaat Ansarullah activists in June 2014. They were handed sentences of 9-9.5 years each.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is related to Al Qaeda, calls for the violent overthrow of secular governments in Central Asian republics and the republics' transformation into Islamic states. Its activity has been declared terrorist in the United States, Russia and some other countries.