Tajikistan on Saturday accused the country's beleaguered Islamic party of ties with the Islamic State group based mainly in Iraq and Syria.

Members of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) have been "in active contact with militants in Syria" and have responded to the militants request to "raise the black flag of IS," an interior ministry spokesman said. 

A Russian military court in Tajikistan on Wednesday sentenced two soldiers from Moscow's largest foreign military base to lengthy prison terms for murdering a local taxi driver.

Fyodor Basimov and Ildar Sakhapov, both 24, were stationed at Russia's 201st military base in Tajikistan when they killed 36-year-old Rahimjon Teshaboev last year.

More than one hundred citizens of Tajikistan have died fighting for the Islamic State group in the Middle East, the ex-Soviet country's leader Emomali Rakhmon said Friday.

"To date more than 100 have been killed in the fighting," Rakhmon said while speaking to university students in the capital Dushanbe, listing cases of Tajik students joining the feared jihadist group from home and while studying abroad.

The parliament of ex-Soviet Tajikistan passed a law Wednesday annulling the citizenship of nationals fighting abroad with militant organizations including the radical Islamic State group active in Iraq and Syria.

"People will automatically be stripped of their citizenship of the republic of Tajikistan if they fight in the ranks of terrorist groups and organizations abroad," Zarif Alizoda, the central Asian country's human rights ombudsman said in parliament.

The Taliban has handed over four Tajik soldiers whom it captured in Afghanistan last year, Tajikistan's State Committee for National Security confirmed Tuesday.

Reports of the soldiers' release were first published Sunday when Qatar's foreign ministry said its Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani had intervened to ensure their handover.

United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon on Saturday warned of a worsening rights situation across Central Asia, as he ended a visit to energy-rich Central Asia in ex-Soviet Turkmenistan.

Ban said he "heard concerns about the deterioration of some aspects of human rights -– a shrinking of democratic space", during his first trip to the region in five years.

Mauludeen lifts the shirt of his writhing, shrieking infant daughter to reveal a gunshot wound, highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of Afghans caught in the crossfire on the Taliban's expanding northern battlefront.

Civilians are bearing the brunt of a large-scale insurgent offensive in Kunduz province, the keystone of the Taliban's summer fighting season which is expected to be the bloodiest in a decade.

Ex-Soviet Tajikistan on Monday lifted blocks on popular websites including Facebook and YouTube it imposed after a police chief appeared in an online video announcing his defection to the Islamic State group.

Local Internet providers restored access to blocked websites that also included the Russian social networks Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, as well as popular independent news agency Asia Plus, following pressure from the United States.

Tajikistan on Tuesday replaced its former special forces head who claims he skipped the country to fight for the Islamic State group and is now on Interpol's wanted list.

The Central Asian country is reeling from the shock defection of 40-year-old Colonel Gulmorod Halimov, which was revealed in an apparent IS propaganda video last week.

A man claiming to be the former head of ex-Soviet Tajikistan's special forces police division appeared in a video Wednesday saying he has joined the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria. 

The man resembling Colonel Gulmurod Halimov, 40, who sparked panic after failing to report for duty in late April, says in the footage that he was driven to join the group by the impoverished state's perceived anti-Islamic policies.