Tajik commandos clashed with inmates throwing firebombs, killing 18 of them and wounding dozens, before putting down a prison rebellion in the Central Asian country.
The rebellion in Khudzhand, 125 miles north of this capital, started last weekend when several dozen convicts took two prison workers hostage and demanded authorities review their sentences.
They siphoned gasoline from a prison truck and made firebombs to defend themselves. Several government officials and local elders went to negotiate, but talks yielded no results and an Interior Ministry unit stormed the prison Wednesday night.
Some of the commandos suffered unspecified injuries, said a spokesman for the local prosecutor’s office
The impoverished former Soviet republic has been unstable since a 1992-93 civil war. The hard-line government signed a truce with rebels in December, ending the heavy fighting, but has had trouble controlling maverick warlords and many tribal and ethnic rivalries.
