The government of Tajikistan says more than two-hundred people are now known to have died in a rebellion by a northern faction which began on Wednesday.

Government troops have surrounded a group of several hundred rebels near the town of Ayni, close to the border with Uzbekistan; other fighters are reportedto be trying to escape over the frontier or into Kyrgzstan.

The government says a band of forty rebels is holding soldiers and officials hostage in the city of Khojand .

The rebel commander, an ethnic Uzbek, Makhmud Khudoberdiyev, has been demanding that his faction be given seats in the coalition government with Islamic opposition groups.