* Jamaat Ansarullah says bombed police station on Sept. 3
* Claim on website used by Russian Islamist militants
By Roman Kozhevnikov
DUSHANBE, Sept 9 (Reuters) - A hitherto unknown Islamist militant group on Thursday claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in Tajikistan last week which killed two officers at a police station in the north of the Central Asian republic.
Jamaat Ansarullah in Tajikistan, in a statement on the unofficial Islamist website www.kavkazcenter.com, said a single suicide bomber drove a car into the police station in the city of Khujand last Friday and blew himself up.
It said at least 50 people were killed or wounded in the attack, the first known suicide bombing in Tajikistan for five years. Tajik authorities said two officers were killed and 25 were wounded. [ID:nLDE68204M]
Authorities in Tajikistan, the poorest of five former Soviet republics in Central Asia, are worried about the growing threat of Islamic radicalism in a country that shares a porous, 1,340-km (840-mile) border with Afghanistan.
Thursday is Tajikistan's Independence Day and authorities are on high alert after the suicide attack and a separate bombing two days later that wounded five people in a nightclub in the capital Dushanbe. [ID:nLDE6850SY]
The website on which the statement was published is often used by Islamist rebels in Russia to claim responsibility for attacks.
Tajikistan's Interior Ministry said after Friday's blast that they suspected the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has fought alongside the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, was responsible.
Jamaat Ansarullah in Tajikistan said in the statement: "The operation was carried out in response to the killing and humiliation of our brothers and simple Muslims, which took place behind the walls of this place accursed by Allah."
Tajik authorities frequently arrest and jail members of Muslim movements not endorsed by the government, describing them as extremists intent on overthrowing the government. More than 100 members of banned organisations have been jailed this year.
Critics of President Imomali Rakhmon, who has led Tajikistan since 1992, accuse him of using the Islamist threat as an excuse to crack down on dissent in the nation of 7 million.
Rakhmon last week fired most of the leadership of Tajikistan's security services after an Aug. 23 jailbreak by 25 alleged Islamic militants accused of plotting to overthrow the government. [ID:nLDE68110W]
Only two of the fugitives have been recaptured, including a former inmate of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay.
In recent weeks, Rakhmon has also criticised a growing fashion among women for Islamic dress and called on parents to withdraw their children from religious schools abroad, saying students could become "terrorists". [ID:nLDE6801HN] [ID:nLDE68110W] (Writing by Robin Paxton; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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