Armenia said on Wednesday that three of its soldiers had been killed in an exchange of gunfire with Azerbaijan. The Interfax news agency later reported that both sides had later accepted a Russian cease-fire proposal to try to calm tensions. Armenia’s defense ministry said in a statement that Azeri forces had attacked Armenian positions near the border between the two countries. Two Armenian servicemen had been injured in the same incident, it said, adding that “fighting continued.”
Azerbaijan’s defense ministry accused Armenian forces of what it called “provocations” in the Kalbajar district and said its army would continue to retaliate, Russia’s TASS news agency reported. Azerbaijan however, had accepted a Russian proposal to enforce a cease-fire in the area, Interfax later reported. It then reported that Armenia’s defense ministry had also accepted the cease-fire. The incident was one of the deadliest since a six-week war between ethnic Armenian forces and Baku over the Nagorno-Karabakh region and surrounding areas ended last year. Both countries blamed each other for the flare-up in tension along the border. Armenia’s defence ministry said an intense gun battle had taken place near the village of Sotk close to the border with Azerbaijan’s Kelbajar region, one of those Baku reclaimed after the war that claimed some 6,500 lives. Tensions between the two countries over the region have been simmering since the end of a war in the 1990s and last year’s escalation of violence was the deadliest in two decades. More than 5,000 people lost their lives and tens of thousands were displaced.
