Armenian soldiers killed in confrontation with Azeri forces
Al Jazeera
Yerevan and Baku accuse each other of opening fire on the heavily militarised border.
Four Armenian soldiers have been killed in a fire fight with Azeri forces on the two countries’ shared border, threatening to destabilise efforts to defuse a 30-year conflict.
The longtime Caucasian rivals accused one another on Tuesday of sparking the incident. It is the first violence reported on the volatile border since peace talks opened last year in a bid to end the longstanding fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Armenia’s Ministry of Defence reported that four soldiers were killed and one wounded on Monday at a post in the southern region of Syunik.
“Units of the Azerbaijani armed forces discharged fire from small arms towards the Armenian combat positions in the vicinity of Nerkin Hand [a village],” Armenia’s Defence Ministry said in a statement.
Azerbaijan claimed that it had launched the “revenge operation” after Armenian forces had earlier opened fire across the heavily militarised border further north.
