Azerbaijan: Five dead in border skirmish with Armenia

Two Azerbaijani soldiers were killed Tuesday when Armenian provocateurs attacked positions near the village of Chayli in Terter District.

The fatal clash occurred at around 16.30 local time (11.30 GMT), the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry reported.

Azerbaijani soldiers resisted the Armenian attack. Three Armenian servicemen were killed and several others wounded in the close fighting, the ministry said.

The Azerbaijani Defence Ministry named the dead Azerbaijani soldiers as Vugar Amirov and Parvin Abdullayev, both born in 1991.

Correspondents for ANS and 1news.az, reported earlier that several clashes occurred during the day yesterday on the contact line separating Armenian and Azerbaijani forces near Chayli.

The first clash occurred early in the morning, from 05.30 to 07.00 local time (00.30 to 02.00 GMT) and a second in the early evening from 16.30 to 18.00 (11.30 to 13.00 GMT) local time. Soldiers from the two sides clashed again in the hours of darkness from 21.00 until midnight (16.00 to 19.00 GMT).

An officer from an unnamed Azerbaijani military unit said that Armenian forces had been repulsed after they tried to break through the front line from positions in the occupied village of Talish.

Armenia Today quoted the Nagorno-Karabakh defence ministry as saying that Azerbaijani forces had tried to encroach upon Armenian positions around dawn and had been repulsed. An Armenian soldier was wounded in the early morning clash, the Karabakh side said.

Elsewhere along the contact line, Armenian forces in the village of Berkaber in Ijevan District opened fire on Azerbaijani positions in Gizil Hajili in Gazakh District from 18.50 to 19.00 (13.50 to 14.00) yesterday, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry said.

The village of Chayli was the scene of a clash on 18 June in which at least five servicemen, four Armenian and one Azerbaijani, were killed. The body of Azerbaijani warrant officer Mubariz Ibrahimov has not yet been returned by the Armenian side.

Armenia, however, dismissed the Azerbaijani statement on Wednesday, saying that "actually, it was quite the contrary." Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan said an Azerbaijani sortie was prevented after Armenian border guards took retaliatory measures and "the subversives" escaped, suffering losses, Armenian news portal Panarmenian.net reported on Wednesday.

However, in a habit of spreading misinformation, Ohanyan said, Baku reported two Armenian soldiers killed and one injured. "The Armenian army always keeps alert and any attack is repelled," he added. The last such incident took place in late June of this year, when four Armenian troops and one Azerbaijani soldier were killed in an exchange of fire on the line of battle, just a day after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sarksyan, met under Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group auspices to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.

More than a decade of mediation led by Russia, France and the United States has failed to produce a final peace deal and Azerbaijan has said it may use force to try to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Tension has increased since Armenia and its traditional foe Turkey, which has close ties with Azerbaijan, reached a historic rapprochement last year.

The dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia remains a threat to stability in the South Caucasus, an important route for oil and gas supplies from the Caspian to Europe.

Source: Agencies