There were two mysterious (and unrelated) killings in Tajikistan today.

In the first, a senior Tajik military official was shot in Dushanbe.

The head of the military institute of the Tajik Defense Ministry was shot dead Friday morning in the country’s capital of Dushanbe, a municipal prosecutor said.

Khabibulo Vakhidov said Khokimshokh Khafizov, 42, was gunned down by an unknown suspect with a Makarov pistol at 6:25a.m. Moscow time (3:25a.m. GMT) by the entrance to the building in which he lived.

Vakhidov said investigators are considering labeling the slaying a terrorist attack.
He said Khafizov, who had been the head of the institute since 1998, died instantly from gunshot wounds. The suspect fled the scene and is being searched for.

In northern Tajikistan, gunmen killed a prison warden and freed a prominent member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Prison warden Bobojan Gadibaiev was killed by the armed assailants, who escaped along with the freed prisoner.

Ghalandarov told RFE/RL that the armed IMU has been increasingly active since an uprising and bloody crackdown in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijon in May. He said the IMU has become more dangerous than the militant Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group that seeks a global caliphate.