Post-Soviet Tajikistan's authoritarian President Emomali Rakhmon said Friday that Tajiks fighting in the ranks of ISIS and other extremist organisations in Iraq and Syria would burn in hell.

Rakhmon, whose secular government is frequently accused of cracking down on religious believers, spoke in the capital Dushanbe ahead of International Women's Day on March 8, which Tajikistan renamed the Day of the Mother in 2009.

Quoting verses from the Koran that say killing other Muslims without reason is a mortal sin, Rakhmon stressed the role of women in raising the next generation of Tajik citizens.

"Did their mothers or these strays themselves not know that their place is in hell? Do they not know that Syria and Iraq are Muslim countries and that every day there are Muslims dying there?" Rakhmon said at a public gathering.

"Hell awaits everyone who kills the faithful without reason."

Tajik authorities have said that up to 300 nationals may be fighting in Iraq and Syria.

In February, a court in the impoverished Central Asian country sentenced 13 men to between nine and 12 years for their alleged role in calling on young people to fight in the Middle East.

Rakhmon's party won a crushing victory in a March 1 parliamentary election denounced by international observers.

The opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) -- the only registered faith-based party in ex-Soviet Central Asia -- failed to win a single seat for the first time since the country introduced a bicameral parliament following a constitutional change in 1999.

On Friday he also complained that more women were beginning to wear black instead of the colourful national dress traditionally associated with the country.

"Even the funeral clothes of Tajik women were never black," he said.

Rakhmon has personally held several meetings with Tajik youths about the dangers of radicalism in recent times, in what observers see as evidence of the government's growing edginess about rising levels of religious observance in the country.

Tajikistan is the only Muslim country in the world to place a permanent ban on minors attending mosques.

Islamic State expelled from Iraq town Al-Baghdadi: US
Washington (AFP) March 6, 2015 - Iraqi government forces and allied tribal militia have retaken the town of Al-Baghdadi, from where jihadists had threatened to attack an airbase housing US troops, the US military said Friday.

Fighters from the Islamic State group had taken Al-Baghdadi, a small town on the Euphrates River in western Iraq, in February, posing a threat to a nearby base where American forces train their Iraqi counterparts.

A statement from the headquarters of the US-led coalition conducting air strikes in Iraq and Syria against jihadist targets said it had ordered 26 air strikes around the town since February 22.

"Iraqi security forces and tribal fighters from the Anbar region have successfully cleared Al-Baghdadi of ISIL (IS), retaking both the police station and three Euphrates River bridges," it said.

US ground forces were not directly employed in the battle, but "the coalition supported the operation with surveillance assets and advise and assist teams" attached to Iraqi headquarters units.

Iraqi and Kurdish forces, supported by Sunni tribes and Shiite militias, have begun to push back IS forces from a swathe of territory the jihadists seized last year in their quest to build an Islamist "caliphate."

The Islamic State group is widely reviled for it brutal tactics -- including mass rapes, murders and kidnaps -- but concerns have also been raised over sectarian killings by Shiite pro-government forces in recaptured Sunni areas.

On February 13, as Al-Baghdadi was falling to IS fighters, suicide bombers attacked Iraqi forces protecting the nearby Al-Asad air base, where a small contingent of US troops works with Iraqi allies.

No Americans were hurt in the assault but their relative proximity to the fighting increased fears that US ground troops could find themselves drawn into the conflict.

Coalition Syria raid kills 9 jihadists: monitor
Beirut (AFP) March 8, 2015 - Nine jihadists with the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front, among them four foreigners, were killed on Sunday in a US-led coalition air strike in Syria near the Turkish border, a monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll may rise as more bodies may be buried under rubble.

"Nine members of the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, including four foreigners, were killed on Sunday at Adme during coalition raids on a headquarters of the group," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

He said the headquarters was spread across several buildings in the border area.

Residents told AFP that at least six salvos of missiles destroyed three houses less than a kilometre from the town centre.

They said practically nothing was left of the buildings, which had been occupied by Al-Nusra Front members.

"There are several victims among the Islamist fighters. There were foreigners there, but mostly Syrians," one said.

Al-Nusra Front jihadists are currently a prime coalition target.

Their military chief Abu Hammam al-Shami and several of his lieutenants were reported killed last week in northwest Syria where the group is trying to establish an Islamist "emirate".

Abdel Rahman said Shami died on Thursday from wounds possibly sustained in a February 27 coalition raid in Idlib province.