It also said two Azerbaijani soldiers were wounded after coming under intensive fire from the Armenian side on Tuesday.
Armenia and Azerbaijan today have accused each other of carrying out provocations at the border, using artillery, armored vehicles and firearms of different calibers.
Armenia’s Defense Ministry said that as a result of an intensive exchange of fire the Azerbaijani side has sustained a “loss of materiel.”
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry, for its part, accused Armenian forces of “carrying out a large-scale military provocation” in the Kalbajar-Lachin area, which “ended in the disarmament and capture of Armenian soldiers.”
Official sources in Baku did not specify the exact number of Armenian soldiers who were allegedly taken prisoner.
“Units of the Armenian Armed Forces carried out a large-scale military provocation. In order to gain military advantage by occupying heights on the state border, the Armenian Armed Forces carried out a military operation at 11:00 am on November 16,” the official statement of the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reads.
The ministry claimed that “the Armenian Armed Forces, concentrating additional troops and military hardware at their border positions in the Basarkechar and Garakilsa regions of Armenia, attacked the positions of the Azerbaijani army in the Kalbajar and Lachin districts of Azerbaijan.”
“Considerable damage was caused to the positions of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces as a result of intensive fire [from the Armenian side] carried out with the use of firearms of different calibers and grenade launchers. According to preliminary data, two servicemen of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces were wounded,” the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said.
Official Yerevan has not confirmed the capture of Armenian servicemen yet. Armenia’s Defense Ministry reported about retaliatory actions of the Armenian Armed Forces taken at around 1 pm “in response to Azerbaijani fire and attempts to advance at the eastern section of the border.”
The Armenian Defense Ministry said the situation along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border remained tense as of 2 pm.
The latest flare-up of tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan comes amid a call from international mediators to de-escalate the situation along the volatile border.
In a statement issued late on Monday, the American, Russian and French co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group also urged the sides “to refrain from inflammatory rhetoric and provocative actions, and implement in full the commitments they undertook under the November 9 statement and other jointly agreed [Nagorno-Karabakh] ceasefire arrangements.”