Armenia – An Azerbaijani military post is seen from the Armenian border village of Nerkin Hand in November 2022.
https://www.azatutyun.am-Four Armenian soldiers were killed and another wounded when their positions on Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan came under cross-border fire early on Tuesday.
Armenia’s Defense Ministry said its outposts around the border village of Nerkin Hand in southeastern Syunik province were targeted for four hours. The gunfire stopped at 9:30 a.m., it said in a statement.
The head of the village administration, Khachatur Baghdasarian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that he heard intense gunshots at around the same time.
Azerbaijan confirmed that its troops deployed in the area opened fire early in the morning. Its State Border Service claimed to have destroyed an Armenian army post which fired at its positions and wounded one of its servicemen the previous evening.
For its part, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry accused Armenian forces of also violating ceasefire at another section of the long border late on Monday. The Defense Ministry in Yerevan denied the “disinformation.”
Tuesday’s fighting was the most serious truce violation reported from the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in the last five months. The situation there was relatively calm amid growing fears that Azerbaijan will also invade Armenia after recapturing Nagorno-Karabakh in September.
Last month, the European Union twice warned Baku against taking such military action in response to renewed Azerbaijani demands for Yerevan to open an extraterritorial corridor to the Nakhichevan exclave.
On Monday, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry summoned the EU ambassador in Baku to denounce a monitoring mission launched by the 27-nation bloc along Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan a year ago.