China has urged Chinese companies and workers to urgently evacuate parts of Tajikistan bordering Afghanistan where five Chinese nationals have been killed and five injured in armed cross-border attacks in the past week.

The attacks, with the first involving a drone that Tajik security officials said appeared to have dropped grenades on a workers camp run by a Chinese company involved in gold extraction, appear to have been launched from Afghanistan by an unknown group or groups.

The latest attack occurred on November 30. Two Chinese road workers were killed in Darvaz district of Tajikistan’s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO). Sources on the ground told Radio Ozodi that the attack occurred at sunset in the village of Shodaki, Vishkharv jamoat. Afghan media said small arms were used in the attack. Asia-Plus said the workers who were killed worked for the China Road and Bridge Corporation.

Tajikistan, a country with a secular government, has tense relations with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan. Dushanbe, which has described the two attacks as “terrorist” in nature, has frequently complained of drug smugglers and illicit gold miners working along its remote frontier with Afghanistan.

The first attack, a night-time assault on November 26, occurred in the wake of a first-ever Tajik “neutralisation” of alleged smugglers with a drone strike, carried out a week ago by Tajik border services, as described in a Tajik TV report. Two smugglers crossing into Tajikistan from Afghanistan were “neutralised” in Hamadoni district in the southern province of Khatlon and drugs were seized.

The employees in the attack on the mining company were killed in proximity to a gold extraction site in Shamsiddin Shokhin district, also in Khatlon province. China is a major investor in Tajikistan, a country of around 10mn, which it borders.

After the first attack, Afghanistan's foreign ministry blamed an unnamed group that it said was intent on creating instability. Kabul said it would cooperate with the Tajik authorities in pursuing the attackers.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon's press service said on December 1 that Rahmon met with his security agency chiefs to discuss how to strengthen border security.

It said that Rahmon "strongly condemned the illegal and provocative actions of Afghan citizens and ordered that effective measures be taken to resolve the problem and prevent a recurrence of such incidents."

Millions of Tajiks, a Persian-speaking nation, live across the border in Afghanistan. Rahmon, who has ruled for three decades, has always backed Afghan Tajiks as opposed to the Taliban. After the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Rahmon called for a “ring of steel” to be formed around Afghanistan for security. The Taliban have previously accused Rahmon of sheltering armed opponents of their rule in Afghanistan.

There have been some minor armed clashes in recent times between Tajik troops and Taliban militants along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, which runs to 1,357-kilometres (843 miles).

Last week, the Taliban requested that Tajikistan grant them control of the Afghan embassy in Dushanbe, according to a report by Omu TV.

Islamist groups in Afghanistan, which also has a short border with China, condemn Beijing for its treatment of Muslims, largely Uyghurs but also other Turkic minorites, in Xinjiang region. It has been characterised as persecution, and even genocide, based on a network of detention camps, but China denies implementing any such policy.