Tajikistan, an impoverished former Soviet state, lies on a busy drug trafficking route out of neighbouring Afghanistan, the world's top producer of opium and its refined form, heroin.
Tajik border guards said 13 of the smugglers had managed to escape back into Afghanistan after the shootout.
Drugs-related clashes on the rugged, 1,400-km (875-mile) Afghan-Tajik border are frequent. Last year Tajikistan took over control of the area from Russia's border guards who had been in charge of patrolling it, raising fears of a surge in smuggling.
Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov has accused the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan of failing to alleviate the poverty that allows illegal drug production to flourish.

Copyright Reuters, 2006