Mudslides have killed five people including three children in Tajikistan as torrential rains lash the former Soviet republic.

A teenage shepherd was killed as he watched over his flock in a village near the capital Dushanbe, while two younger children were swept away by the torrent of mud as they played in a nearby street, rescuers said on Saturday.

The two adult victims were killed in another village, around 60 kilometres from the capital.

Mudslides claimed 15 lives, eight of them children, earlier this month in the mountainous state on the border with Afghanistan, the poorest of the former Soviet bloc.