The Islamic State group on Friday claimed responsibility for a deadly attack against a Tajik border post this week, but Central Asia watchers cast doubt on the jihadists' claim as well as official Tajik statements on the incident.
"By the grace of Allah the Almighty, the soldiers of the Caliphate attacked a border guard post of the Tajik apostates in the Ishkobod area, near the Tajik-Uzbek border," the IS group said in a statement released online.
Tajik authorities on Wednesday said that fifteen jihadists were killed during an attack on a border post that officials blamed on members of the Islamic State group who crossed over from Afghanistan.
The overnight assault also left a soldier and policeman dead, authorities in the ex-Soviet republic said.
The Islamic State group claimed that its fighters killed 10 soldiers in the clashes.
In a separate statement, Amaq, the IS propaganda agency, said that all the IS attackers were killed but did not specify how many or where they had come from
However "the whole story is a bit murky,", Raffaello Pantucci, senior associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, told AFP. "Everyone I have asked in Tajikistan is suspicious."