South Caucasus nations Azerbaijan and Armenia on Tuesday night accused one another of a shootout on their shared border in Azerbaijan's region of Karabakh.
Armenian armed forces opened fire on Azerbaijani army positions in the Lachin region, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday morning.
“Starting from 6:25 p.m. on Nov. 29 to 0:45 a.m. on Nov. 30, Armenian units from positions in the directions of the Basarkechar region, as well as the Gorus region using various caliber weapons periodically subjected to fire the Azerbaijan Army positions stationed in the directions of the Kalbajar region, the Lachin region and the Garagol,” the ministry said.
Baku also claimed “members of an illegal Armenian armed detachment in the territory of Azerbaijan, where the Russian peacekeepers are temporarily deployed, using various caliber weapons subjected to fire the Azerbaijan Army positions stationed in the direction of the Aghdam region” on Tuesday evening.
Azerbaijan army units stationed in the said directions took “adequate retaliatory measures,” the ministry informed.
Earlier in the morning, the Armenian Defense Ministry too accused its neighbor of opening fire on its combat positions in the eastern part of the border zone, claiming they used “different caliber firearms” and “mortars.”
“No casualties from the Armenian side,” the ministry said on Twitter.
Armenian news agency Artsakh Press also reported the situation on the front line was “relatively stable” as of 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday.
The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia is linked to decades-old hostilities over control of the Karabakh region, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but was illegally occupied by Armenia for three decades until 2020.
The two countries fought two wars over the disputed territory in the 1990s and again in the autumn of 2020 when six weeks of particularly intense clashes saw over 6,500 lives lost before a Russian-brokered truce ended the hostilities.
Under the 2020 deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had occupied for decades, and Russia stationed peacekeepers to oversee the fragile cease-fire.
There have been frequent exchanges of fire at the Caucasus neighbors' border since the 2020 war.
Last night’s alleged shootout comes not even a month after Baku and Yerevan swapped similar accusations of provoking a shootout along the troubled border in what was dubbed the worst fighting between the two since 2020 and resulted in the death of over 280 people from both sides.
The same day, the foreign ministers of the rival nations met in Washington for U.S.-mediated peace talks and agreed to continue engaging in direct dialogue and diplomacy. A week prior, Baku, Yerevan and Moscow had adopted a tripartite declaration in Sochi that stipulated neither side would use force and stick to earlier agreements that sought to end their conflict.
Meanwhile, in the past week, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s envoy for the normalization of ties between Azerbaijan and Armenia, to implement the terms of the Sochi deal and oversee the safety of his country’s border with Armenia.
However, last Friday, the Azerbaijani leader called off a meeting with his Armenian counterpart Nikol Pashinian that was supposed to take place on Dec. 7 in Brussels after the Armenian leader demanded that French President Emmanuel Macron mediate the discussion.
