“Armenia is now in deep water after attacking Azerbaijan,” National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Thursday.

Akar spoke after receiving the commander of Azerbaijani Air Forces and Deputy Defense Minister Ramiz Tahirov.

“They will hoist with their own petard, and they will pay for their crimes,” Akar added.

Border clashes erupted again earlier on the same day between arch-foes Azerbaijan and Armenia, officials in both countries said, following a pause in fighting amid a flare-up over a decadeslong territorial dispute.

At least 16 people on both sides have been killed since border clashes erupted Sunday between the ex-Soviet republics, which have been locked for decades in a conflict over Armenia’s illegal occupation of Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The territory was seized by ethnic Armenian separatists in a 1990s war that claimed 30,000 lives, though the recent fighting broke out on a northern section of their shared border far from Karabakh.