Border clashes have resumed on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border following the latter's provocations, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said early Tuesday.
The ministry noted that the Armenian military engaged in wide-scale provocations near the Dashkasan, Kalbajar and Lachin regions. It continued by saying that sabotage groups of the Armenian military also laid mines between the strips of land and roads of the Azerbaijani military.
Clashes took place after Armenian troops tried to take precautions, the ministry said.
The Armenian military opened fire on Azerbaijani positions in the Dashkasan, Kalbajar and Lachin regions, with howitzers and different weapons from the Basargeçer, Istisu, Karakilise and Gorus areas.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decadeslong dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within Azerbaijan but was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.
Moscow brokered a peace deal last November to end six weeks of fighting over the territory, during which more than 6,600 people were killed. The Russia-brokered truce allowed Azerbaijan to reclaim control over large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas that the Armenia-backed separatists controlled.
After the conflict ended, Azerbaijan launched a massive reconstruction initiative in the liberated Karabakh region.
In March, Azerbaijan sent a proposal containing five conditions to normalize relations with Armenia, the country’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said.
One of the points in the proposal includes the demarcation of the borders between the two countries, which Azerbaijan had proposed to solve, but Armenia had consistently brought preconditions to address it.
