Kyrgyz troops have been dispatched to the border with Tajikistan, police stand guard at power stations and suspected militants have been gunned down in the country's volatile south.

When Kyrgyzstan heads to the polls tomorrow it will be under what the government says is a surging threat from Islamist militants, whose aim is to destabilize the Central Asian state.

"It is a bomb which can explode at any minute," said the ex-head of Kyrgyzstan's National Security Council, General Miroslav Niyazov.

"The situation is very disturbing. The territorial integrity of the countries in the region is under threat."

Kyrgyzstan - an impoverished ex-Soviet state bordering China - has a long history of battling home-grown militants, particularly in the volatile Fergana Valley region it shares with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Tensions have been surging here since May, when Uzbekistan said a suicide bomber who entered the country from Kyrgyzstan had blown himself up in the Uzbek city of Andijan.