A spokesman for Armenia’s Ministry of Defense said the incident happened at an eastern section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border at around 11:00 on Thursday.
Aram Torosian said the Armenian soldier was wounded by “an enemy shot,” adding that the wound received by the private identified by his initials H. A. was of medium severity, but not life-threatening.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry issued a statement, denying the report by the Armenian side and calling it a “lie.”
This is the second Armenian soldier that Yerevan says was wounded along the border with Azerbaijan within the last week.
The reported incident comes amid what appears to be a persistently tense situation along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border as well as in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian authorities on Wednesday accused Azerbaijani forces of randomly firing at farmers working in the field in the eastern Askeran district of the region. They said no one was hurt in the incident, but agricultural work had to be stopped.
Azerbaijan routinely denies breaking the ceasefire along the border with Armenia and in the Karabakh region. It also denies targeting civilians.
In a statement today Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said that Azerbaijani forces have taken “necessary measures” to stop “illegal engineering activities” by ethnic Armenian forces for the purpose of strengthening military positions. It said the kind of actions constituted a violation of the terms of a Russia-brokered ceasefire reached two years ago.
Nearly 300 soldiers were killed on both sides in border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan in mid-September, which proved to be the deadliest fighting since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh that claimed the lives of close to 7,000 people.
The spasm of border violence two months ago was followed by a flurry of diplomatic activity, with Yerevan and Baku engaging in talks hosted by the European Union, the United States and Russia.
As part of an EU-brokered arrangement between Armenia and Azerbaijan a civilian monitoring mission of the European Union was deployed along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border from Armenia’s side in October. It had been agreed that the mission of the EU Monitoring Capacity would last two months.