DUSHANBE: A suicide bomber in an explosives-packed car slammed into a police station in Tajikistan on Friday, killing a senior police official and wounding at least 25 others, interior ministry officials said.

The car crashed into an iron gate in front of a regional police headquarters in the northern city of Khujand at high speed and exploded, killing the driver and partially demolishing the building.

A number of officers were missing, feared dead in the rubble.

The massive blast shattered windows for blocks around the station, said witnesses.

"As a result of the explosion this morning in Khujand, a senior officer in the Tajik police was killed," interior ministry spokesman Colonel Mukhammadjon Nazriyev said.

"The building was severely damaged as a result of the powerful explosion, and 25 police officers were taken to hospital with varying degrees of injuries," he added.

Nazriyev blamed the bombing on Al Qaeda-linked militant group the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, saying the attack had been an attempt to free fighters being held on murder charges in Khujand.

One doctor reached by telephone at a hospital in Khujand said that the majority of the injured were being treated for shrapnel wounds, and that some were in critical condition.

The toll from the bombing could rise as investigators continue to search the rubble of the building for the bodies of missing officers, an interior ministry official said.

Residents of Khujand, a city of around 150,000 people in a mountainous area of northern Tajikistan near the volatile Fergana Valley, described panic as the explosion shook the city, shattering windows for blocks around the station.

"The explosion was very strong. I left my home and on my way to school I dropped into a shop and the shop keeper told me that they had blown up the police department," 57-year-old Hursandoi Navruzova said by telephone.

"It's just horrible. I immediately saw the fear on the face of everyone I met," she added.
Agence France-Presse