ASHGABAT, Sept 14: Turkmen police fought lengthy gun battles with a gang of drug dealers, officials said Sunday, after reports 20 police had been killed in the clashes in the capital of the reclusive Central Asian state.

Police clashed with “a criminal group involved in the illegal drug trade” in Ashgabat, the Turkmen foreign ministry said in a rare confirmation of unrest in the ex-Soviet republic, one of the world’s most totalitarian regimes.

“Special units of Turkmenistan’s law-enforcement agencies carried out an operation to seize (the group), as a result of which the above-mentioned criminal group was neutralised,” the ministry said.

The statement did not give details on the fighting, which the exiled Turkmen opposition described as a bloody clash between government forces and an extremist religious group.

A journalist in Ashgabat heard automatic weapon fire and intermittent blasts over a roughly 12-hour period overnight Friday to Saturday.

The neighbourhood in Ashgabat’s northern suburbs where the fighting took place was sealed off until Sunday.

When it was reopened, no sign of the fighting was evident except that police had cordoned off a drinking-water plant that had apparently been at the centre of the clashes, the journalist said.

Police battled “a religious group, possibly radical Islamists”, according to a diplomatic source quoted by a website set up by opposition leader Boris Shikhmuradov, founder of Turkmenistan’s Popular Democratic Movement.—AFP