Hurriyet, Turkey
July 30 2010
Several Armenian soldiers dead in military ‘incident’
Friday, July 30, 2010
YEREVAN – Agence France-Presse
Armenian forces perform their final day of maneuvers in
Nagorno-Karabakh on Aug. 10, 2004. Hürriyet photo
Up to six Armenian soldiers have died in a shooting incident in the
disputed Azerbaijani enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a human-rights
activist and news media said Friday.
Officials refused to confirm the number of dead, but Armenia’s defense
ministry issued a statement Thursday saying that an `incident’ in the
military involving `use of firearms’ had resulted in an unspecified
number of deaths.
Human-rights activist Artur Sakunts told Agence France-Presse that,
according to his sources, an Armenian soldier had killed five fellow
servicemen in Karabakh on Wednesday.
Sakunts said the soldier had gone on a shooting rampage after being
discovered asleep at his post, killing two officers and three
soldiers, before turning his gun on himself.
Armed forces in former Soviet republics such as Armenia have been
plagued by similar shooting incidents, blamed on brutal hazing and
corruption.
Azerbaijan has suffered from two military shootings this year,
including an incident in January that saw two Azerbaijani soldiers
shoot and kill four fellow servicemen before killing themselves.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been occupied by
Armenian forces since the end of a six-year conflict that left about
30,000 people dead and displaced 1 million prior to a 1994 truce.
From: A. Papazian