DUSHANBE -- The Tajik Interior Ministry says a member of the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was killed during a special operation outside the capital, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.
Tajik Interior Ministry spokesman Muhammadjon Nazriev has that Shavkat Yusufov was shot dead by ministry forces on August 9 in the Arbobkhotun village of the Rudaki district, which borders Dushanbe.
Nazriev said Yusufov was born in 1977 and was from the Chorkuh area of the northern Isfara district in Sughd Province.
He said Nazriev engaged in a gunfight with Tajik forces and that the ministry officers found a Kalashnikov gun with explosives and extremist literature where Yusufov was killed.
Police had first issued an arrest warrant for Yusufov in 2006.
The Interior Ministry said some 20 members of the IMU have been detained in Tajikistan so far this year.
Authorities do not appear to have confirmed a Reuters report from Dushanbe suggesting that police had killed a long sought-after fugitive, IMU militant Lutfullo Tursunov, in a shoot-out the same day.