Armenia’s Investigative Committee confirmed on Monday reports that the small airport’s walls and windows were damaged by several gunshots fired early on September 1. The committee said it is conducting a criminal investigation into attempted murder and damage to property motivated by “ethnic hatred.”
“According to preliminary data, the gunshots were fired from Azerbaijani-controlled territory,” the spokesman for the law-enforcement agency, Gor Abrahamian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenia’s state border guard service said earlier that the Kapan airport first came under cross-border fire on August 18 less than 24 hours after a plane carrying Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian landed there. According to it, three gunshots were fired from Azerbaijani army positions overlooking the facility, damaging its roof and one of the windows.
Another shooting incident was reported on August 19 just minutes after a plane carrying other senior officials from Yerevan touched down on the runway. Local officials accused Azerbaijan of trying to disrupt the first post-Soviet flight service between Yerevan and Kapan launched by the NovAir airline on August 21.
Later in August, the Armenian government notified the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) about the shootings and asked the 193-nation body to help prevent a repeat of such incidents.
A spokeswoman for a Yerevan-based ticketing agency representing NovAir said that the airline continued its twice-weekly flights to and from Kapan, most recently on Monday, following the latest gunfire. The private carrier uses small L-410 aircraft capable of carrying up to 17 passengers.