Military authorities in Yerevan said on Monday that Azerbaijani armed forces fired in the direction of Armenian positions located in the eastern part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border the previous night.
Armenia’s Ministry of Defense reported no casualties on the Armenian side, noting that the situation along the border on Monday morning was “relatively stable.”
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense quickly issued a statement disproving the Armenian side’s report as “disinformation.”
In a statement later on Monday Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense also accused ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh of firing at Azerbaijani positions in the east of the region (Fizuli and Khojavend/Martuni). It said the shooting took place between 10:00 am and 14:25 pm.
The ministry said Azerbaijani army units had taken retaliatory actions, but released no other details.
De facto ethnic Armenian authorities in Stepanakert called the Azerbaijani ministry’s report “disinformation.”
Armenians and Azerbaijanis have increasingly been accusing each other of breaking a fragile ceasefire and escalating the situation along their tense border as well as in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone recently.
Yerevan says at least two Armenian soldiers were seriously wounded in border skirmishes with Azerbaijan over the past two weeks.
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.
Russia currently deploys about 2,000 peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh after brokering a ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan following their 44-day war over the region in September-November 2020.