| Yesterday's report of events can be seen here. |
[IsraelTimes] Iran denies accusations by Tajikistan police that it was partly responsible for an attack that killed four tourists in the former Soviet republic."The Islamic Theocratic
Republicof Iran denies any link with this terrorist attack and categorically denies that there is any military base to train murderous Moslems inside Iran," says foreign ministry front man Bahram Ghasemi, according to the Mehr news agency.
"We condemn all terrorist acts all over the world, including the recent attack on foreign tourists in Tajikistan," he says.
Two Americans, a Dutch and a Swiss citizen were killed Sunday about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital Dushanbe after being struck by a car and attacked on a popular cycling route.
The Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
jihadist group grabbed credit but this was rejected by Tajikistan police, who blamed a banned Islamist opposition party that it said had undergone "military sabotage" training in Iran.
| Shiite Iran has an awful lot of connections to Sunni terror groups, from open support of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to sheltering members of Osama bin Laden's family and the inner circle of Al Qaeda when they fled the Americans in 2002. |
| Radio Free Europe has video of the attack, showing the driver deliberately circling round against the traffic flow to take another pass. |
| Yahoo adds: |
Among the dead suspects was 21-year-old Jafariddin Yusufov, the owner of the Daewoo Leganza car that struck the tourists on Sunday afternoon, local officials said.
The Dutch foreign ministry told AFP on Monday that one of the dead tourists was a 56-year-old man who was cycling the route with his 58-year-old partner, without providing names.
The cyclists were travelling on a road that adjoins the famous Pamir Highway, a Soviet-era road surrounded by stunning mountain scenery.
| Reuters adds: |
A "wanted" notice disseminated by Tajik authorities named two suspects aged 18 and 19 from the same village close to the Tajik-Afghan border, and a third one, 21, from the town of Nurek located not far from the site of the attack.
The government of Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon - who expressed condolences to the U.S., Swiss and Dutch authorities on Monday - fought Islamist guerrillas in a 1992-1997 civil war which claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Some Tajik Islamists then joined a coalition government but in 2015 the state outlawed their political party, accusing its leaders of being behind a failed coup, a charge they deny.
Thousands of people from the mainly Muslim region have joined Islamic State militants in recent years. Several men from Central Asia were detained last year over a bombing of the metro in Russia's St Petersburg, and over truck attacks in New York and Stockholm.