Tajik troops now control devastated town .
Yuri Kushko
TAVILDARA , Tajikistan 1996-08-30
Tajik government troops now control of the strategically vital town of Tavildara after driving out Islamic rebels , but sporadic gunfire still echoed in the nearby Pamir mountains on Friday .
The commander-in-chief of Tajikistan 's armed forces , Major-General Nikolai Sherbatov , took a group of journalists by helicopter to the remote , and now devastated , town to show that his forces held it .
He said his troops took Tavildara without casualties on August 23 , but the crack of sniper and machinegun fire revealed the presence of opposition fighters in the surrounding mountains .
Sherbatov said the rebels were located about three km ( two miles ) east of Tavildara around the village of Layron .
Tavildara , 200 km ( 120 miles ) east of the capital Dushanbe , was in ruins .
Shells had smashed roofs and windows and empty shell cases littered the streets .
The town straddles a strategically important road linking government and rebel-held territory and has fallen succesively to both sides in a bloody tug-of-war which began last February .
Tajikistan , which borders Afghanistan and China , has been split by a dragging four-year conflict after a civil war between communists and a frail coalition of Islamic and liberal groups .
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and many more have been displaced in the fighting , which breached a shaky United Nations-sponsored ceasefire .
Tavildara is now apparently inhabited only by a few old men , women and their grubby , barefoot children .
Fruit remained on the trees as there was no one to pick it .
" Help me , help me , " said a chorus of women begging soldiers for food .
The town 's school and a shop doubling as a warehouse for humanitarian aid were destroyed in the fighting .
" We had to build our own earth shelters to survive the fighting , " said Rajab Adinayev , a bearded elderly Tajik in a long white shirt .
Although shy in front of the government soldiers , several inhabitants accused government forces of widespread looting of homes and livestock .
They also said rebel fighters had looted medicines from the local hospital .
One elderly man , who declined to give his name , said two of his sons were now refugees in Moscow and the other two had left to fight for the opposition .
He also said government soldiers had raped the wife of one of his sons . "
It 's not important who holds this town , we just need to stop the war , " he said .