Tajik President Emomali Rahmon expressed his deep condolences to his Kazakh counterpart, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, over the consequences of deadly blasts at a military facility in Jambyl region, the Tajik president’s official website said on Saturday, August 28.    

Tajik leader also asked to convey his condolences to families and relatives of those who were killed in those blasts. 

Media reports say that according to the preliminary data, fourteen people were killed and 90 others wounded in a series of blasts triggered by a fire at a military base in southern Kazakhstan in the evening of August 26.  According to Kazakhstan’s defense minister, the soldiers died while trying to put out the fire which triggered some 10 blasts.

Videos posted online showed that the explosion took place not far from a major road connecting provincial center Taraz to Almaty, the country’s business hub and biggest city.

In 2019, four people were killed and dozens hurt in a similar accident in the Kazakh town of Arys in the adjacent Turkestan region, when blasts at an ammunitions depot forced authorities to evacuate the whole town of 44,000 people.

That blast was the third lethal explosion in the town’s vicinity in the space of a decade.