Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Tuesday of carrying out shooting on the border between these two rival Caucasian countries, an incident which left two Armenian soldiers dead according to Yerevan.
On Tuesday morning,
“units of the Azerbaijani armed forces opened fire (...) on Armenian positions near Nerkin Hand”
, a village in the southern region of Syunik, bordering both Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan, the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“According to initial information, there are two dead on the Armenian side and wounded
,” he said.
For its part, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry accused in a statement the Armenian forces of having fired twice on Monday evening on its positions
“in the direction of the village of Kokhanabi, in the Tovouz region”,
to the northwest of Azerbaijan.
The Armenian Defense Ministry rejected the accusations, saying they
"do not correspond to reality
. "
Read alsoIn Azerbaijan, the irremovable Ilham Aliev rushes his re-election
This incident comes shortly after the re-election as head of Azerbaijan of Ilham Aliev, in power for two decades in this hydrocarbon-rich country.
The 62-year-old strongman from Baku is riding high on his military victory against the inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, which ended three decades of independent republic marked by two wars.
While he prides himself on pursuing a peace process with Armenia, the Azerbaijani president has never hidden his other territorial ambitions: control of the Armenian region of Syunik to connect the enclave of Nakhchivan to the rest of the 'Azerbaijan.