YEREVAN, July 22. /TASS/. The situation on the Armenian border with Azerbaijan remains calm early on Wednesday, with no shooting incidents reported, Armenian Defense Ministry Spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan wrote on her Facebook page.
“As of 00:47 local time (23:47 Tuesday Moscow time) there have been no shooting (on the line of contact),” Stepanyan said.
Late on Tuesday, she reported that a special operations unit of the Azerbaijani army attempted to attack Armenia’s positions. “The attack was repelled by Armenian troops. The enemy retreated sustaining serious losses,” she wrote, adding that no casualties were reported on the Armenian side.
The Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan rejected those reports. “There were no new attacks in that sector on our part,” Defense Ministry spokesman Vagif Dargyakhly said. “On the contrary, the situation at our sector of the state border remains calm.”
The situation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border escalated on July 12, when Azerbaijan said that the Armenian army had tried to attack Azerbaijan’s positions with use of artillery systems. Armenia, in turn, said the situation on the border had aggravated after Azerbaijan’s attempted attack. Baku has reported the death of twelve servicemen. Yerevan said four Armenian soldiers had been killed and ten more were wounded.
On July 17, both sides reported that the situation on the border was relatively calm.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs – Russia, France and the United States.
Yorumlar kapatıldı.