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More Skirmishes Reported On Armenian-Azeri Border


ARMENIA -- Azerbaijani and Armenian army posts on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, June 18, 2021
ARMENIA -- Azerbaijani and Armenian army posts on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, June 18, 2021

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Thursday of violating the ceasefire along their border, underscoring lingering tensions between the two states.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said that its troops guarding a “southeastern section” of the border came under small arms fire from nearby Azerbaijani positions early in the morning.

“The gunfire by Azerbaijani units was silenced by retaliatory actions,” the ministry said in a statement. “There are no casualties on the Armenian side.”

For its part, the Azerbaijani military said earlier in the day that Armenian forces fired at its troops deployed at two different sections of the long frontier. A spokesman for Armenia’s Defense Ministry dismissed the claim as “disinformation.”

The mutual accusations came two days after an Armenian soldier was killed in what military authorities in Yerevan described as an Azerbaijani ceasefire violation.

Baku alleged Armenian truce violations along the Kelbajar and Lachin districts sandwiched between Armenia and Azerbaijan on a daily basis following the August 31 meeting of the two countries’ leaders held in Brussels. Yerevan flatly denied the allegations just as regularly.

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan accused Azerbaijan on September 3 of misrepresenting the results of the Brussels summit hosted by European Council President Charles Michel. Mirzoyan charged that Baku is “intent on torpedoing the peace process and continuing its policy of ethnic cleansing through the use of force.”

Tigran Grigorian, an Armenian political analyst noted that deadly fighting that erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh in early August followed similar Azerbaijani claims.

“In all likelihood, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry is preparing the ground for another escalation,” he claimed. “It’s clear that Azerbaijan has been putting pressure on Armenia in such a fashion to clinch concessions in various processes.”

“At this stage, Azerbaijan probably has certain demands relating to a number of processes, and we should brace for a new escalation, perhaps on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border this time around,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

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