Azerbaijan on Thursday accused Armenia of shelling border positions of its army in the autonomous Nakhchivan exclave on late Thursday and earlier on Friday, amid fragile peace efforts.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement that the military positions near the settlement of Ganza, located about 5 kilometers (3,1 miles) from the Armenian border, were fired upon by units of the Armenian Armed Forces.
The settlement is situated in the autonomous region's southernmost Ordubad district.
"The Azerbaijan Army Units took retaliatory measures,” the statement further said, adding that the incident took place at 6:10 p.m. local time (1410GMT).
Armenia's Defense Ministry denied the statement from the Azerbaijani side, saying that it "does not correspond to reality."
It further said that through diplomatic channels, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's office proposed to the presidential administration of Azerbaijan the establishment of a bilateral mechanism for investigating cases of cease-fire violations.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought two wars – in the 1990s and 2020 – over the control of Karabakh, which had been occupied by Armenians but was traditionally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
Most of the territory was liberated by Azerbaijan during a 44-day war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement that opened the door to normalization and talks on border demarcation.
Baku in September recaptured the mountainous enclave in a one-day offensive as separatists surrendered and some 150,000 Karabakh residents moved to Armenia.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been working to sign a peace treaty since. The issue of opening transport links in the region, including the Zangezur corridor, a land route connecting Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan, has been a contentious issue in ongoing peace talks, as well.
Baku argues that Azerbaijani citizens and cargo traveling to Nakhchivan via Armenia should not be subject to any controls, while Yerevan's position is that passages on that route should be in accordance with its own laws.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said that reaching a peace agreement with Armenia is impossible until Armenia removes its constitution a reference to the country's 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, which proclaims Armenia's unification with Karabakh as a national goal.
In response, Pashinyan last month said his country "needs a new constitution" because the current one "doesn't reflect citizens' vision of the relations with neighboring countries."
In May, Armenia returned to Azerbaijan four border villages that it had seized decades earlier, with Pashinyan saying the move was part of his efforts to secure peace with Azerbaijan.
In June, Pashinyan said Yerevan was ready to sign a peace agreement with Baku "within a month,” while Aliyev said in July that the text of the agreement could be finalized within a matter of several months.
However, the sides have sporadically exchanged fire along their troubled border in recent months, stoking concerns that an agreement could be further delayed.
