Three Armenian soldiers were killed and four others wounded in Nagorno-Karabakh early on Thursday in a fierce firefight which military authorities in Stepanakert said also left at least two Azerbaijani servicemen dead.
According to Karabakh’s Defense Army, the soldiers -- Hakob Khachatrian, Eduard Hayrapetian and Arshak Harutiunian -- died while fighting back an Azerbaijani commando attack on their positions in northern Karabakh. An army statement said their unit, backed up by reinforcements rushed to the outpost, repelled, pursued and “destroyed” the attackers during the 2-hour gun battle.
The Karabakh Armenian army also released photographs of four rocket-propelled grenade launchers, an assault rifle with a night-vision scope and commando ammunition which it said were left on the battlefield by the retreating enemy. A follow-up statement issued by it identified two Azerbaijani soldiers allegedly killed by its forces.
Armenian media reports citing military sources in Stepanakert spoke of between 7 and 14 Azerbaijani servicemen killed in what was the most serious instance of truce violation in the Karabakh conflict zone reported since August.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry was quick to deny attacking Karabakh Armenian positions in the area. It also claimed that its troops killed and wounded about 20 Armenian soldiers as they thwarted armed “provocations” organized by the Armenian side.
A ministry statement cited by Azerbaijani news agencies said nothing about casualties suffered by Azerbaijani troops.
Later in the day, Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov visited a military hospital in Baku and talked to wounded soldiers undergoing treatment there. Hasanov’s press office said the visit was connected with a public holiday.
In Yerevan, meanwhile, Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan accused Azerbaijan of again heightening tensions along “the line of contact” around Karabakh in defiance of international mediators’ efforts to bolster the shaky ceasefire regime there. Balayan said that Baku will bear responsibility for all consequences of the renewed escalation.
“The Armenian side is prepared for any development of the situation,” Armenia’s Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian said in written comments on the incident. “But I see no danger of large-scale hostilities.”
Ohanian said that Azerbaijani incursions regularly reported by the Armenian military are “reckless in the military sense.” He also accused Baku of hiding its combat casualties to avoid a domestic backlash against what Yerevan claims is a deliberate policy of escalation.
Deadly fighting along “the line of contact” and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border intensified sharply in January, leading President Serzh Sarkisian to threaten “asymmetric” retaliatory strikes against Azerbaijani military targets. The U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group seemed to hold Baku primarily responsible for that upsurge in a joint statement issued later in January.
The mediators urged the conflicting parties to “strictly adhere to the ceasefire” after visiting Baku, Stepanakert and Yerevan on February 16-19. A February 20 statement by them said Sarkisian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev “agreed to consider proposals from the Co-Chairs that could strengthen the ceasefire.”