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Fresh Skirmishes Reported On Armenian-Azeri Border


ARMENIA -- Firefighters work among the ruins of a house in the village of Sotk hit by Azerbaijani shelling during border clashes, September 14, 2022.
ARMENIA -- Firefighters work among the ruins of a house in the village of Sotk hit by Azerbaijani shelling during border clashes, September 14, 2022.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have accused each other of violating the ceasefire that stopped heavy fighting on their border last week.

The Defense Ministry in Yerevan said one Armenian soldier was wounded when his unit came under cross-border mortar and small arms fire on Wednesday evening.

“The enemy fire was silenced by retaliatory actions,” said Aram Torosian, the ministry spokesman.

He clarified afterwards that the skirmish occurred near Sotk, a border village in Armenia’s Gegharkunik province which was heavily damaged by Azerbaijani shelling last week.

For its part, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said that early on Thursday Armenian forces opened fire on its troops in the Kelbajar district bordering Gegharkunik, using mortars, grenade launchers and automatic weapons. It also claimed that an Armenian “sabotage group” tried unsuccessfully to attack their Azerbaijani positions in the area.

Torosian dismissed the claims as “disinformation.” No further truce violations were registered as of Thursday afternoon, the official told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

The fresh skirmishes were reported hours after Azerbaijani President Ilham again blamed Armenia for last week’s fighting and threatened it with further military action.

“I hope that this [escalation] finally taught them a lesson because they saw that nothing can stop us,” Aliyev said during a visit to Lachin, another Azerbaijani district sandwiched between Armenia and Karabakh. “Nobody’s phone call, no statement or initiative will stop us.”

Meanwhile, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said that Azerbaijan is trying to force Armenia to fulfill its “maximalist demands.” He charged earlier that Baku wants Yerevan to fully accept the Azerbaijani terms of a bilateral peace treaty and to open an “exterritorial corridor” connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave.

On Monday, Mirzoyan met with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov in New York for talks hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the ongoing annual session of the UN General Assembly. Blinken urged the two sides to prevent further hostilities and “return to the peace process.”

The United States reportedly helped to stop the September 13-14 border clashes which left at least 280 Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers dead.

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