They said that a group of residents of Machkalashen, a village in Karabakh’s Martuni district, came under small arms fire from nearby Azerbaijani army positions as they worked in local vineyards on Thursday and Friday morning. Although none of them was injured by the gunfire, they had to stop their work, the interior ministry in Stepanakert said in a statement.
Hunan Grigorian, the mayor of the neighboring village of Sos, said Azerbaijani troops opened the fire despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers protecting the farmers.
“They used not only assault rifles but also heavy machine guns,” Grigorian said, adding that such incidents have been a regular occurrence in the last two weeks.
Similar shooting incidents were reported from another Martuni village, Chartar, earlier this week. Artyom Jivanian, a local farmer, said workers in his vineyard came under fire on Wednesday. They have still not returned to parts of the 10-hectare vineyard close to Azerbaijani army positions, said Jivanian.
“People are now working in places not visible from the Azerbaijani positions,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “That way they can feel a bit safer.”
It was the third such incident reported by the Chartar mayor to Russian peacekeeping forces in the past week. He asked the peacekeepers to help ensure the security of local farmers.
Earlier in March, two other villages in Martuni also alleged Azerbaijani gunfire towards their residents engaged in agricultural work.
The reported incidents highlight tensions mounting in the conflict zone more than three months after Azerbaijan blocked the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia.
The Azerbaijani military has repeatedly accused Armenia this month of transporting military personnel and weapons to Karabakh and threatened to take “resolute” actions to stop the alleged shipments. Yerevan has strongly denied the allegations, saying that Baku may be preparing the ground for launching offensive military operations in Karabakh or along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry released on Friday another purported footage of a Russian armored vehicle escorting a convoy of trucks along a dirt road running parallel to a section of the Lachin corridor blocked by Azerbaijani government-backed protesters. It portrayed the video as further proof of Baku’s allegations.
The Karabakh interior ministry insisted, however, that these and other vehicles using the barely passable road transport only civilians and “humanitarian cargo.”