One border guard was killed and two wounded in an armed attack close to Kyrgyzstan's volatile border with Central Asian neighbor Tajikistan, official said Saturday.

Authorities in the ex-Soviet state were probing the incident after unknown assailants opened fire late Friday on a border guard base some 25 kilometers from the frontier, Kyrgyzstan's deputy prime minister Abdyrakhman Mamatiliev said.

Veteran Uzbek President Islam Karimov looked certain to prolong his 25-year grip on power after he was nominated Thursday to stand in March polls.

The Liberal Democratic Party put forward Karimov, 76, for the March 29 presidential election in the Central Asian nation during a meeting of its political council.

Uzbekistan on Monday announced a near 90-percent turnout in its weekend parliamentary election, a poll Western observers said lacked genuine competition.

All the parties in Sunday's polls support President Islam Karimov, who has ruled the central Asian republic since the collapse of communism.

Polls opened in Uzbekistan early Sunday for parliamentary elections in the ex-Soviet Central Asian state where all four competing parties support President Islam Karimov's policies.

More than 20 million voters have registered to elect the 150-seat lower house of parliament, the Oliy Majlis, after the authorities sent out text messages urging people to vote.

Uzbek fighters from an Al-Qaida-linked militant organisation have thrown their support behind the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group controlling swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

A top leader for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an ally of the Taliban that has been mainly based in Pakistan's tribal belt since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, announced its backing for IS.

The Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan is routinely torturing imprisoned journalists and rights activists, a global rights watchdog alleged Friday, urging Western sanctions on Tashkent and launching a Twitter campaign to highlight the issue.

Some 34 such prisoners locked up "on politically motivated charges suffer torture and abysmal prison conditions," Human Rights Watch said in a new 121-page report.

Al-Qaida's launch of a new branch in its heartland of South Asia masks the "desperation" of the world's former terror bogeyman as  it finds itself eclipsed by the savagery and slickness of the Islamic State, analysts say.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday he would visit the Central Asian state of Uzbekistan this week, the first such trip by the top Turkish diplomat in 13 years amid efforts to improve troubled relations.

"Uzbekistan is a friendly and brotherly country at the heart of Central Asia," Davutoglu, who will begin his visit on Thursday, told reporters in Ankara.

Pakistani jets bombed militant hideouts in a lawless tribal district Saturday, killing scores of Uzbek and local insurgents in a massive ongoing offensive against the Taliban, the military said.

Air strikes were carried out at Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, and Boya village after shots were fired at troops, according to a statement.

Uzbekistan has released more than 3,000 prisoners under an amnesty granted to nearly 70,000 people, the prosecutor-general of Central Asia's most populous state said on Tuesday.

The annual pardon applied to 69,497 people, the prosecutor-general's office said in a statement.