On July 25, thousands of people held a similar protest in the capital to voice solidarity with the pro-opposition gunmen.
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All 20 gunmen remaining inside a police compound in the capital surrendered on Sunday, ending a two-week standoff, The Armenian security service said.
The standoff, involving armed members of the radical group, has left two police officers dead and several wounded on both sides.
Martirosian said the stones were thrown by “provocateurs” and assured the officers that the crowd does not intend to break through the police cordon and enter the police compound.
“A police serviceman suffered a gunshot wound outside the [Erebuni] police compound and was transferred to hospital”, Aharonian wrote on Facebook at midnight. We believe that we have achieved our goal: “we became the spark that allowed people to rise up and it makes no sense to spill blood”, Varuzhan Avetisyan, a leading member of the group, was quoted as saying.
The assailants had taken nine people hostage but gradually released all of them.
Police also used stun grenades to drive back the opposition supporters, some of whom threw stones at the rows of riot police blocking their path.
Police issued an ultimatum to the group to surrender following violent clashes between police and protestors on Friday night. On the evening of July 30 police officer Yura Tepanisyan was killed by sniper gunfire in a police vehicle parked over 1,000 feet away from the seized police compound.
An armed man walks inside the Erebuni police station seized by “Sasna Tsrer” movement members in Yerevan, Armenia, July 23, 2016.
The group, Founding Parliament, has sharply criticised the government of the former Soviet republic and called for people to take to the streets to force the president and the prime minister to step down.
“With their consistent and coordinated actions, special units of Armenian law-enforcement bodies have forced members of the armed group to surrender to the authorities”, the NSS said in statement, adding, “Twenty terrorists have been arrested”. Police have cut electricity to the station and are refusing to deliver food after the release of the last hostage.
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Sefilian, who was born in Lebanon, is well known in Armenia for his military successes in the war against neighboring Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. Sefilyan was jailed in June over allegations of illegal weapons possession.
