Two Armenian soldiers were killed and another injured by Azerbaijani fire near the border between the two countries, the Armenian Defense Ministry announced on Friday, a new episode of tensions in the context of the latent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“There are two dead in combat and one injured after the Azerbaijani army fired on Armenian outposts near Sotk,” the ministry lamented in a statement in southeastern Armenia.
The ministry said it would “later issue a statement” on the soldiers killed “as well as the health status of the injured soldier.”
The Sotk region, where the battle took place, is located in southeastern Armenia, on the border with Azerbaijan, where incidents between the two countries’ armies are frequent.
The last major deadly clash took place on June 28, when four Armenian soldiers were killed in Nagorno Kabarakh, a separatist region with an Armenian majority disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Baku and Yerevan had accused each other of responsibility for this new escalation in this mountainous region, which has been at the center of tensions since the 1990s.
These armed incidents at the border come as Yerevan has accused Baku since December of hindering supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh by blocking a key route, the Lachin corridor, leading to shortages and a “humanitarian crisis.”
Baku, which defends the establishment of a checkpoint for security reasons, reiterates that civilian transport can circulate freely through this land axis.
In this delicate context, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian told the AFP news agency in mid-July that a new war between his country and Azerbaijan was “very likely.”
The last war between the two countries in 2020 ended with a defeat for Armenia, which had to cede territories in and around Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Since then, the peace process has stalled, despite mediation efforts by Russia, a country with historic influence in the region, the Europeans and the United States.