The 45-year-old victim was pronounced dead in a nearby hospital where the six other men also received urgent treatment for their gunshot wounds. Three of them were in a critical condition, according to the Armenian Health Ministry.
“Three persons are being operated on at the moment,” Ashot Kurghinian, a deputy director of the Armenia Medical Center, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The shootout occurred in broad daylight in a residential area of the city’s western Ajapnyak district. An RFE/RL reporter saw spent cartridge cases and cars with shattered windows at the scene cordoned off by police.
“We heard gunfire,” said one local resident. “Children playing in the yard ran away in fear. One of them fell. A large number of young men passed in front of our building.”
The Armenian Interior Ministry said later in the day that investigators have identified “the full circle of individuals involved in the incident” and are now taking “measures to track them down.” It did not name them or say anything about the cause of the shootings.
The Yerevan newspaper Hraparak reported, meanwhile, that the gunfight was part of a bloody vendetta between two clans led by reputed crimes figures. One of them was shot dead in Ajapnyak in 2024. The father of the man allegedly leading the rival gang was murdered last month.
The deadly violence underscored a steady increase in shootings, armed robberies and other firearm-related crimes committed in Armenia. The Armenian police reported 152 such crimes last year, up from 109 in 2024 and 94 in 2023. Gun violence similarly surged by 40 percent in 2023. Interior Minister Arpine Sargsian downplayed this trend a year ago, saying that “crimes committed with firearms account for only 0.3 percent of our overall crime statistics.”
The country’s overall crime rate has also risen considerably since the 2018 “velvet revolution.” Critics claim that the country is not as safe as it used to be because its current government is more incompetent and softer on crime than the previous ones.