Military authorities in Yerevan are ready to repatriate the body of an Azerbaijani serviceman that they say has been found by Armenian armed forces near the border with Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhijevan.
Armenia’s Ministry of Defense said on Thursday that such repatriation can be organized through the mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In a report released by its press office the Ministry explained that the body was found in no man’s land in front of Armenia’s combat positions at the southwestern border with Azerbaijan.
“According to operative-intelligence data, the mentioned serviceman was a captain of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, a company commander, who escaped after a crime at his military unit,” the report said.
No other details were reported immediately.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense confirmed later on Thursday that the dead serviceman was 19-year-old Bakhruz Jalilbeyli who left the military unit without permission after committing a crime.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are locked in a simmering armed conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly Armenian-populated region that declared its independence from Baku amid a 1988-94 war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
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