Armenia says soldier killed in border clash with Azerbaijan

Armenia said Wednesday one of its soldiers had been killed by Azerbaijani troops on the border, in the latest military incident between the enemies since last year’s war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The Armenian defense ministry said that Azerbaijani forces opened fire on the Armenian military’s position in the border region of Ararat.

As a result, a contract soldier received a “fatal injury,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The defense ministry strongly condemns the actions of the Azerbaijani side and warns that they will not go unpunished,” the statement said.

There was no immediate reaction from Azerbaijan.

The six-week war over Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last autumn claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended in November with a Russian-brokered ceasefire under which Armenia ceded territories it had controlled for decades.

Both Azerbaijan and Armenia have reported occasional shootouts in recent months along their shared border, sparking fears of a new flare-up in the territorial dispute.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan that broke away from Baku’s control in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the ensuing conflict has claimed around 30,000 lives.