CAIRO/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for a deadly attack on a border post on the Tajikistan-Uzbekistan frontier two days earlier, the group's Amaq news agency reported on its channel on the Telegram messaging application.
In a video published by Amaq on Telegram, a group of masked men claiming to be the perpetrators of the attack pledged allegiance to Islamic State's new leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi.
Quraishi replaced Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant group, who died during a U.S. raid in Syria on Oct. 26.
Tajikistan's National Security Committee said 15 militants were killed along with one border guard and one policeman in a gunbattle that followed the attack on a border post 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe. Amaq said at least ten members of the Tajik security forces were killed.
(Reporting by Hesham Abdul Khalek in CAIRO; Writing by Polina Ivanova in MOSCOW; Editing by Peter Graff)