Five killed in new Azerbaijan-Armenia clash in Nagorno-Karabakh

Two Azerbaijani soldiers and three Armenian officials were killed in an exchange of fire in the disputed enclave.

Azerbaijani troops and ethnic Armenians exchanged gunfire in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, killing at least five people.

Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said on Sunday that two soldiers were killed after Azerbaijani troops stopped a convoy suspected of carrying weapons from the region’s capital to remote areas. The convoy said it had used an unauthorized road.

The Armenian foreign ministry said three officials from Karabakh’s interior ministry were killed. The convoy carried documents and a service pistol, it said, dismissing Azerbaijani allegations that weapons were being carried as “absurd”.

It said the Azerbaijani version of events was a “provocation planned in advance and instructed by the top leadership”.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars in the more than 30 years that both ex-Soviet states have been independent.

The fighting for control of the Armenian-populated enclave of Karabakh in Azerbaijan has claimed thousands of lives.

A fragile truce has been in place between neighboring countries since a 2020 war that left more than 6,500 dead and forced Armenia to cede territories it had controlled for decades.

Since mid-December, a group of self-proclaimed Azerbaijani environmental activists have blocked the only road connecting Karabakh to Armenia, the Lachin Corridor, to protest what they believe is illegal mining.

Yerevan has accused Baku of creating a blockade there.

Pro-Armenian separatist authorities blamed Sunday’s gunfight on “an Azerbaijani Armed Forces sabotage group” that “opened fire on the car belonging to a police passport and visa department”.

Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said the incident “demonstrates once again that Azerbaijan needs to create an appropriate checkpoint on the Lachin-Khankendi road”.

The Armenian foreign ministry said that “sending an international investigation team to the Lachin Corridor and Nagorno-Karabakh is becoming an essential necessity”.