Iskandar Khatloni was attacked in his apartment by unidentified assailants who hit him in the head with an ax. He died later from his injuries at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital. He was 45.
Khatloni joined RFE/RL as a news correspondent in 1996, reporting from Moscow for the Tajik service. He previously worked for BBC radio for 10 years. Khatloni covered politically sensitive issues in the former Soviet Union, including human rights abuses in Chechnya. In the months before his death, he had also reported on government corruption and drug trafficking in Tajikistan.
He was a well-known publicist and poet in his native Tajikistan, with four published volumes of verse and numerous articles to his credit. Before turning to radio journalism, he wrote for the literary weekly of Tajikistan.
Khatloni was a graduate of the Gorki Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He left behind a wife and a daughter from a previous marriage.