Armenia says its soldier killed by sniper fire near Azerbaijan border
Armenia’s military says one of its soldiers has been killed by sniper fire from across the border with arch-foe Azerbaijan.
It serves as the latest bout of violence in the recent flare-up of tensions between the two former Soviet republics.
In a brief statement on Monday, the Ministry of Defense of Armenia announced that the soldier had been “killed by sniper fire from the direction of the enemy” overnight.
The deadly incident came after a week of relative calm on the flashpoint border.
The clashes, which erupted in mid-July, have so far claimed the lives of 19 people, including the Armenian trooper, from both sides.
Azerbaijan alleged that Armenia was using “large caliber machine guns and sniper rifles” and violating a truce multiple times along the border over the past 24 hours.
Azerbaijan has been engaged in a dispute with Armenia over Karabakh — a territory which broke away from Azerbaijan in a bloody war in the 1990s after being seized by ethnic Armenian separatists. Some 30,000 people were killed in the conflict, which ended with a fragile truce in 1994.
In 2016, scores were killed in four days of renewed fighting.
The recent border violence, unusual as it erupted some 300 kilometers from the mountainous Karabakh, has seen artillery shelling and mortar fire, with both sides blaming each other for starting the clashes.
Azerbaijan even threatened to strike Armenia’s nuclear power station if its strategic facilities were attacked.
Russia, the United Nations and Western powers have already called for an immediate de-escalation amid fears that Moscow and Ankara, which backs Baku, could be drawn into a full confrontation.
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