The Azerbaijani forces kept shelling the Armenian villages of Nerkin Karmiraghbyur, Vazashen and several others in the evening of September 3.
An Armenian civilian and a contract serviceman were reported injured. Spokesman for the Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan confirmed the news to .
He said both have been hospitalized. The wounds are not life-threatening.
Hovhannisyan dismissed the reports that the Armenian side is moving armored forces to the border.
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake was registered in Azerbaijan at 08:49 local time (04:49 GMT), the Armenian National Survey for Seismic Protection reports.
The quake measuring 7-8 at the epicenter was felt in a number of Armenian settlements, namely Vanadzor, Kapan, Stepanavan, Ijevan, Noyemberyan, Choratan, Aygedzor and Yerevan.
The Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire 100 times at the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan overnight, the NKR Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Despite the decreased number of ceasefire violations, the rival fired 1,800 shots in the direction of the Armenian positions using weapons of different caliber, including 60 and 80mm mortars.
The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army pressure the activeness of the rival and confidently continue with their military duty all along the line of contact.
Congressman Adam Schiff has called to speak out in the face of outrageous Azeri aggression.
“On September 2 the Nagorno Karbakh Republic celebrated their 24th Independence Day. We must continue to stand with the people of Artsakh in their fight for freedom, self-determination, and prosperity by supporting this young democracy and speaking out in the face of outrageous Azeri aggression,” Rep. Schiff said in a statement.
US Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick has said the escalation at the line of contact is unacceptable.
Warlick took to Twitter to comment on the situation at the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan over the past day.
The mediator uploaded the picture of a 120mm mortar released earlier by the with the following message attached:
“This is a 120mm mortar reportedly used in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Such escalation is unacceptable.”
This is a 120mm mortar reportedly used in the Nagorno- conflict. Such escalation in unacceptable.
— James Warlick (@AmbJamesWarlick)
Arpine Hovhannisyan of the Republican Party faction will be appointed as new Justice Minister, Parliament Speaker Galust Sahakyan has revealed, Armenpress reports.
“The issue of appointment was discussed at the sitting of the Executive Body of the Republican Party. It was decided to nominate Arpine Hovhannisyan to the post,” the Speaker said.
The Armenian national team will face Serbia tonight in a Euro-2016 qualifier. The match will take place at Karadjordje stadium in Novi Sad and will kick off at 22:45 Yerevan time.
Armenia and Serbia are placed at the bottom of Group I with one point each.
On Monday, Armenia will host Denmark in Yerevan.
All state agencies are prepared to make prompt and balanced decisions in any situation envisaged by the scenario of the “Shant-2015” strategic command post exercises, Deputy Chief of General Staff of RA Armed Forces Movses Hakobyan told a press conference today. According to him, the country has been brought to a high level of combat readiness, Armenpress reports.
“The exercises aim to reveal the potential of the state in case of possible war. This is the first time Armenia is holding exercises of such scale, involving all state agencies,” Hakobyan said.
“It’s still untimely to assess the results, the outcome will be summed up at a later stage. The agencies get certain assignments, some of which should be applied in practice. All participating bodies will get assessed,” Movses Hakobyan said.
He stressed that the Armenian Armed Forces have seriously prepared for the military exercise and have all kind of material resources stored for as long as 65 days.
– The 14th Istanbul Biennial, Saltwater: a Theory of Thought Forms, opened this week amid calls for all participating artists to suspend their work for 15 minutes in support of Turkey’s Kurdish minority.
Most notable is the focus on Armenia and the Armenian genocide, an atrocity not recognised by the Turkish state. At the press opening on 2 September, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the curator of this year’s biennial, said it was “very timely” to speak about what happened 100 years ago, as well as the “traumas and ethnic cleansing” that has occurred in other parts of the world throughout history, including Australia, Syria, Poland and Germany.
In what Christov-Bakargiev described as a “diplomatic act”, the Dilijan Art Initiative, which sponsored the Golden-Lion winning Armenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, is supporting 13 artists in Istanbul who are either Armenian, of Armenian descent or have made works relating to Armenian history.
They include the Modernist painter Paul Guiragossian, who was born to survivors of the Armenian genocide and has 14 works on show in Istanbul Modern. A self-portrait from 1948 bears witness to Guiragossian’s itinerant life: a shell destroyed the artist’s Beirut studio in the 1970s, damaging many canvases. The self-portrait was repaired, but the scar across his cheek remains.
“My father was born in Jerusalem and his work often deals with displacement and marginalised people,” says Manuella Guiragossian, the president of the Paul Guiragossian Foundation.
At the Galata Greek School, the Lebanese-born artist Haig Aivazian is presenting a performance of a folkloric song by the Armenian-Turkish oud master Udi Hrant Kenkulian, whose family survived the genocide and lived in Istanbul from 1918 onwards. Titled Wavy Wavy Is the Sea of Bolis, O Mother, the work combines “two complex sets of melodic, cultural and linguistic creolisations” that echo the “transition of the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish republic”, says Aivazian, who is also exhibiting in the Armenian pavilion in Venice.
Upstairs, the Iraqi-Jewish artist Michael Rakowitz is showing The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours. The newly commissioned installation consists of plaster friezes moulded from architectural details crafted by Armenians throughout Istanbul. “[The friezes] show the traces of Armenian hands and fingers, which bear silent witness to what happened in the city in 1915 when the Armenians were annihilated and dispossessed,” Rakowitz says.
Several other works that refer to Armenian history are dotted around the city—the biennial covers more than 30 venues this year. For example, the Belgian-born artist Francis Alÿs is presenting a new black and white film, Silence of Ani, which depicts children from Eastern Anatolia playing bird songs on whistles and flute-like instruments.
Despite the potential for backlash over the Armenian question, Christov-Bakargiev says she encountered no censorship in the lead up to the biennial. Indeed, the curator sees hope in the transformative power of art. “With and through art we mourn, commemorate, denounce and try to heal and commit to the possibility of joy,” she says.
Armenian international Yura Movsisyan may leave his current club Spartak Moscow this winter, football agent Roman Oreshchuk has said in an interview with NTV Football (НТВ футбол).
According to him, English clubs are interested in the services of the Armenian striker.
Movsisyan has scored three goals and provided an assist in the first seven matches this season.