Azerbaijan on Tuesday accused archfoe Armenia of shelling the positions of its military posts in the border area of the Sadarak district.
"Units of the Armenian Armed Forces fired at the positions of the Azerbaijani army from various small arms," Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said in a statement posted on its website.
Armenian armed formations also fired at the Azerbaijani army positions near Susha in the Karabakh region, the ministry said.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Armenia.
Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have been locked in conflict over the Karabakh region for three decades, regularly exchange fire across their shared border.
Karabakh, which was internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but occupied by Armenia for nearly three decades, has been the focal point of the conflict between the two ex-Soviet Union republics who have gone to war twice over the territory, as well as seven other adjacent districts after both gained independence in 1991.
Tens of thousands of people were killed in the two wars over Karabakh, one running for six years until 1994 and the second in 2020, which ended in a Russia-negotiated cease-fire deal that saw Moscow deploy a peacekeeping contingent along the Lachin corridor, the only road linking Armenia to the enclave.
A Russian-brokered peace agreement is celebrated as a triumph in Azerbaijan.
However, a dispute over the establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin corridor in April has refueled violent tension between the rival nations, which saw another half a dozen people killed from both sides since last December.
Baku said the border checkpoint was created in response to security threats from Armenia, citing the transfer of weapons and ammunition to the Karabakh region. Yerevan denied the charges and claimed the move violated the cease-fire.
In recent weeks, the sides traded more accusations of retaliatory fires as they try to establish permanent peace, with the participation of Türkiye and Russia, as well as the United States and the European Union.
Also on Tuesday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian called the loss of control over the city of Shusha a "turning point" in the 44-day clashes with Azerbaijan, now dubbed the Second Karabakh War.
Answering questions from a parliamentary commission established to investigate his actions during the war, Pashinian said that he signed the trilateral statement with Azerbaijan and Russia that ended the war after "difficult and lengthy discussions.”
The Armenian premier revealed he had phone talks 60 times with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who served as a mediator, and 20 of those calls were held on Nov. 8 and even on Nov. 9, 2020, when the agreement was sealed.
Pashinian called Azerbaijan's triumph in Shusha a "turning point" in the conflict, after which he said Yerevan had no choice but to sign the trilateral statement.
"After the loss of Shusha, Stepanakert (Khankendi) was under attack, pressure on Martuni inevitably increased, and most importantly, 25,000 of our soldiers were under threat of encirclement," he said.
In response to Pashinian’s speech in the Armenian Parliament, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that the Armenian premier distorted the number of negotiations conducted during the said war.
Pashinian’s speech, it said, demonstrated Armenia's refusal to liberate Azerbaijani territories through negotiations.
His denial of the shelling of the densely populated Azerbaijani cities outside of the warzone after every negotiation also showed how Armenia "distorts the facts," it added.
"It is necessary for Armenia to learn from its historical mistakes and abandon its efforts to impede the successful outcome of the peace process in the post-conflict period," the statement concluded.
