Baku on Saturday sent a note to Tehran seeking clarification following reports that Iranian citizens trespassed into Azerbaijani territory, Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry announced.
"Any foreign visit to the territories of the Republic of Azerbaijan must be carried out in accordance with rules established within the national legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity," said Aykhan Hajizada, a foreign ministry spokesperson.
His statement came amid reports that 14 Iranian citizens recently entered Azerbaijani areas home to Armenians where Russian peacekeepers are temporarily stationed.
"Regarding the news about the illegal crossing of the citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran to our territories, a corresponding note verbal was sent to the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Republic of Azerbaijan to clarify the information," Hajizada said in a statement published on the Foreign Ministry website.
"Currently, we are waiting for a response from the other side."
Most recently, tensions between the two neighbors spiked over targeted remarks in state media from both sides about one another, with Baku expressing particular “discomfort” about the general attitude of the Iranian government toward Azerbaijan after the Armenian occupation of the Karabakh region ended as well as the wide-scale military drills Tehran held on their shared border.
Baku on Saturday also sent a group of experts to the territory housing Armenians and temporary Russian peacekeepers to investigate the allegedly illegal operation of Azerbaijani mines mining and the subsequent environmental impact, according to a notice from the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has contacted the command station of the Russian forces to deploy its experts to the region and discuss the circumstances of the experts’ activities there, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, Armenian authorities claimed via social media that Azerbaijani civilians blocked off the Lachin corridor, a mountain road that links Armenia and the Karabakh region, reporting that a long line of cars formed on the road connecting the Karabakh city of Khankendi to Armenia.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been at loggerheads since the 1990s over the control of Karabakh, a region internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but was illegally occupied by Armenia for three decades until 2020.
Baku and Yerevan 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. However, there have been frequent exchanges of fire at the Caucasus neighbors' border since then.
Just this week, the sides traded accusations of a shootout along their shared border, not even a month after the troubled region witnessed what was dubbed the worst fighting between the two countries since 2020 and resulted in the death of over 280 people from both sides.
