This mountainous nation on Afghanistan's northern border has been on high alert for weeks amid terrorist blasts and a prison escape by Muslim insurgents and government opponents. A weekend ambush on a military convoy left at least 25 soldiers dead in a remote gorge along the Rasht Valley.

Radio Free Europe's Tajik language service reported Thursday that it has received a video message from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan militant group claiming responsibility for the weekend attack.

Military vehicles rumbling through the valley have spread alarm among local residents, many of whom now fear a renewed descent into civil conflict.

Over the past few days, truckloads of troops have been driving into these mountain towns daily and local people have reported seeing dozens of military helicopters flying overhead.

The government says it is seeking the arrest of former opposition warlord Mirzokhodzha Akhmadov, whom they accuse of organizing the terror attacks killed 2 and wounded scores of others and of involvement in the ambush on the soldiers.

Authorities also say Akhmadov is giving shelter to Mullo Abdullo, a leading Islamic militant who played a prominent role during Tajikistan's five-year civil war.

Akhmadov also came to prominence during the 1992-97 civil war between President Emomali Rakhmon's secular government and the mostly Islamic opposition. Around 100,000 people were killed in the conflict, which made Tajikistan one of the poorest countries in the world.

As part of the peace deal that brought an end to the fighting, several major opposition figures — including Akhmadov — joined the government. Akhmadov led the anti-organized crime police department in the central Garm region until 2008.

But iron-fisted President Emomali Rakhmon has methodically consolidated his grip on power and sidelined the former opposition, causing resentment and anger.

Akhmadov was accused in 2008 of killing a senior police officer on an inspection trip in Garm. In that episode, a team of police officers was attacked as they were heading to an official meeting that was to focus on the activities of Akhmadov.

Akhmadov was defiant in an interview this week, before the authorities announced the order for his capture.

"Our soul is clean, we fear nobody," Akhmadov told an Associated Press reporter, speaking at the gates of his unguarded home outside the town of Garm.

Akhmadov said government troops have been conducting house-to-house searches to interrogate his former allies.

"After that, the rest of the mujahedeen turned to me and said it could be their turn next, so they told me they would head for the hills," Akhmadov said.

"And that is what they did, taking their older sons with them, so that they could not be tortured," he said.

"There are about fifty people there now." Five men were killed during a raid on the home Wednesday — one day after the interview — but officials say Akhmadov is believed to have also fled into the surrounding mountains.

Authorities say Akhmadov has joined forces with Abdullo, a radical Islamic commander who fled to Afghanistan after the end of the civil war. He is believed to have returned to his native country some time last year and assembled a force including Afghans, Pakistanis, as well as fighters from Russia's volatile southern Caucasus region.

The greatest threat to stability cited by governments in the region is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan — a militant group created in 1998 and affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Taleban. Although focused initially on Uzbekistan, experts say its scope has expanded to take in most countries in the region.

Radio Free Europe's Tajik service Radio Ozodi said Thursday it had received a video message from somebody identifying himself as IMU spokesman Abdufattoh Ahmadi.

Ahmadi said in the recording that the attack on the military convoy was a response to repressive anti-Islamic policies carried out by the government of Tajikistan, Radio Ozodi reported.

Radio Ozodi also cited Ahmadi as saying more terrorist attacks would follow if the government didn't halt its assistance for US and NATO military operations in Afghanistan.

Fear that militants have been pouring into Tajikistan have been prompted by concerns that the success of anti-insurgent operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan may only serve to shift the fighting northward.

Only sparse details are available about the scope and scale of military operations currently under way in Tajikistan's Rasht Valley, as information is tightly controlled and most journalists have been barred from reaching the affected area for several days.

Taxi drivers returning to the capital, Dushanbe, from Garm on Wednesday evening reported hearing gunbattles earlier in the day.

Respected Central Asia news Web site Ferghana.ru also cited local residents in the Kamarob area, the site of the convoy ambush about 30 minutes drive west of Garm, as saying they heard gunshots and rocket launchers being fired late Tuesday evening.