Two Americans, a Swiss and a Dutch citizen, all tourists, have been killed in Tajikistan, central Asia. They were among seven people on a cycling tour who were rammed by a car and set upon with knives on a road about 55 miles southeast of the capital, Dushanbe.
The attack had the hallmarks of a terror strike by jihadists linked to Islamic State. A replica incident was the vehicle-ramming and stabbing on London Bridge in July last year, which left eight people dead and 48 injured.
It was hardly surprising therefore that on Tuesday, Isis disseminated a video of five men who it said were behind the murder of the cyclists. They were spotted sitting on a sunlit hillside under an Islamic State banner and swearing an oath of allegiance to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Although officials from Dushanbe point the finger at political opponents, a real threat of violent Islamism does exist in Tajikistan, in wider Central Asia and in the region’s large migrant communities in Russia.
Terror attacks inside the former-Soviet Central Asian republics are relatively rare. However, it should not be forgotten that thousands of men travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the jihad.
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