Friday’s skirmish violating the brittle truce comes a day after the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that the presidents of the two feuding nations were ready to “meet each other later this year” in an effort to end years of hostility.
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Azerbaijan’s high-ranking official has said the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs visited the region to activate negotiations on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Armenian soldiers fired at Azerbaijan positions in Goranboy, Terter, Aghdam, Fuzuli, and Gadabay districts near the border, killing one Azerbaijani soldier, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan said Saturday.
As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Co-Chairs Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, James Warlick of the United States, and Pierre Andrieu of France traveled to Yerevan and Baku to meet Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“Some 160 violations have been registered over the past night”, Armenian defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovannisyan told AFP.
Mammadov further said the co-chairs visited the region and took an initiative to organize meetings between foreign ministers and presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenian armed units have violated the ceasefire regime a total of 86 times throughout the day in various directions along the contact line, using 60mm- and 82mm-caliber mortar launchers and large-caliber machine guns.
The conflict left an estimated 30,000 people dead and one million others displaced before the two sides agreed to the ceasefire in 1994.
The predominantly Armenian-populated region is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.
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Clashes have intensified in the past year along the Karabakh frontline and across the two ex-Soviet republics’ shared border. Observers in Armenia linked this relative calm to the first-ever European Games that Baku hosted last month.
