Yeltsin Backs More Aid for Tajikistan

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Thursday backed sending immediate military aid to Tajikistan as fresh fighting flared on the former Soviet republic’s Afghan border and an Afghan town was bombed by Russian jets.

A military spokesman in the Tajik capital Dushanbe said opposition forces in the remote eastern region of Badakhshan clashed with Russian-led border guards starting after noon.

A week of fighting has claimed the lives of 35 border guards from the Commonwealth of Independent States. Further losses were sustained Thursday, but there were no more details on the number of casualties, the border guards spokesman said.

The official Kabul Radio, monitored in Islamabad, Pakistan, said Russian jets based in Tajikistan bombed the northern Afghan town of Taloqan on Thursday, killing 100 people and wounding 200.

Officials in Moscow were not available for comment.

Afghanistan has reported Russian bombings for the past four days on two provinces bordering Tajikistan, and it had complained of Russian air raids in recent months, but Russia has rejected all accusations.

An opposition spokesman, contacted by telephone in Badakhshan, said Russian jets had bombed the headquarters of Tajik rebels in Afghanistan. He said eight Tajik fighters and an unknown number of civilians were killed.

Yeltsin, on holiday in the southern resort of Sochi, held talks with Russian border guards’ chief Andrei Nikolayev.

Yeltsin’s press office said the president favored providing immediate technical and military aid to Tajikistan to maintain the stability of southern frontiers of the commonwealth of former Soviet republics.