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    Categories: 2021

Clashes on Armenia-Azerbaijan border leave 3 dead, 4 wounded

The Indian Express
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Armenia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that three of its troops were killed and two more were wounded in clashes with Azerbaijani forces on the border between the two ex-Soviet nations, which have been locked in a decades-long tug-of-war over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said two of its servicemen were wounded on Wednesday.

Both countries have accused each other of starting the clashes. Azerbaijan said Armenian forces opened fire at its positions on the Kalbajar section of the border. The Armenian military said its personnel were attacked by the Azerbaijani forces.

Tensions on the border have been simmering since May, when Armenia protested what it described as Azerbaijani troops’ incursion into its territory. Azerbaijan has insisted that its soldiers were deployed to what it considers its territory in areas where the border has yet to be demarcated.

In the wake of the clashes on Wednesday, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry urged Armenia “to stop military provocations and start negotiations on the delimitation of the two state borders.”

Armenia’s Foreign Ministry vowed to “use all its military-political tools in accordance with international law” in response “to the use of force by Azerbaijan against the territorial integrity of Armenia.”

More than 6,000 people were killed last fall in the six weeks of fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within Azerbaijan but was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.

The hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal in November allowing Azerbaijan to reclaim control over large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas, which Armenia-backed separatists controlled for more than 25 years.

Emil Lazarian: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS