ISIS claims credit as car mows down riders

Cyclists from Europe and US who were killed in an Islamic State attack in Tajikistan had described their trip as ‘dream come true.’

Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan died in an ISIS attack on them in Tajikistan. Picture: Instgram.

Cyclists from the US and Europe who were killed in an attack claimed by Islamic State in Tajikistan had described their trip as a “dream come true”.

The victims were American couple Jay Austin and Lauren ­Geoghegan, Rene Wokke from The Netherlands and Markus Hummel from Switzerland, according to Tajik authorities.

Each of the travellers had a blog to document journeys that took them to the Pamir Highway, a ­Soviet-era road that stretches across 2000km near the border with Afghanistan and has spectacular views.

Cycles are left where the four tourists were killed in Tajikistan. Picture: AP.

The Americans explained on their blog SimplyCycling that they had “decided to quit our jobs and bike around the world”.

The pair had travelled through Africa and Europe before flying to Kazakhstan in May.

The posts on the site and on their Instagram account broke off as they ventured into mountainous Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet states.

“Tajikistan is a tough place to cycle. It is cold and windy and mountainous and, most of all, very, very high,” Mr Austin wrote a week ago.

“Really glad I did it. No need to ever do it again,” he said of crossing a Tajik mountain pass at a height of 4655m with thin air and intermittent snow.

Mr Austin had been featured in The Washington Post in 2015 as one of those following a “tiny house” trend and downsizing his daily life to essentials.

On Sunday, a car mowed into the group of seven cyclists, two of whom were injured while another was left unscathed.

The riders were attacked by a gang armed with knives and guns in a highly unusual incident that Tajikistan has said was organised by a member of an opposition ­Islamist party.

The parents of Ms Geoghegan, 29, said the trip was typical of her “enthusiastic embrace of life’s ­opportunities, her openness to new people and places, and her quest for a better understanding of the world”.

They had set out on their ­adventure a year ago.

Mr Wokke, a 56-year-old psychologist, was cycling with his partner Kim Postma, a 58-year-old hospital administrator, who was injured in the incident.

The website of Dutch newspaper NRC said the couple was travelling from Bangkok to ­Tehran and chose to go through Tajikistan to avoid the dangers of Afghanistan.

Mr Wokke was a very experienced traveller and had visited more than 130 countries, according to his brother, Erik.

A local woman helps a wounded cyclist. Picture: AP.

The pair, from Amsterdam, had left Thailand in February and planned to arrive in Tehran next month before flying back to The Netherlands.

Mr Wokke and Mr Postma des­cribed the Pamir Highway on their blog as “the ultimate challenge of this trip”.

Mr Hummel also kept an online record of the journey with another Swiss national, Marie-Claire Diemand, who was injured in the attack.

In a blog entry entitled “A dream comes true”, they explained that they were travelling along the Silk Road from Xi’an in China to Kyrgyzstan.

Their last entry was last Wednesday when the whole group was staying in the Tajik town of Khorugh, after adventures including their tent filling with drifts of sand.

They said that on the highway “we enjoy the silence, the dreamlike landscape and look at the Pamir River and the Afghan side of the valley all day long”.

Friends and well-wishers posted messages of condolences on the American victims’ Simply­Cycling Instagram page. Angela Wuerth, wrote: “I’m so sad that something so tragic could happen to such beautiful, kind people.”

AFP