TBILISI/BAKU: Armenia said on Tuesday that four of its soldiers were killed by Azerbaijani fire along the two countries’ heavily militarised border, the first fatal incident since they began negotiating a deal to end more than 30 years of intermittent war last year.
Fatal exchanges have been common along the closed, roughly 1,000-km frontier since 1988 when Christian Armenia and mostly Muslim Azerbaijan first went to war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, but the situation had calmed amid peace talks in recent months.
Tuesday’s incident was the biggest since hundreds died when Azerbaijan retook Karabakh in September, prompting an exodus of the region’s ethnic Armenian population.
Armenia’s Defence Ministry said in a statement that the four soldiers were killed and another wounded at a combat post near the southern Armenian village of Nerkin Hand.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that its attack on the Armenian position had been in retaliation for an Armenian “provocation” the previous day that it said wounded one of Baku’s soldiers in the area.Baku said it had no intention of further escalation.