“Nobody was injured,” the ministry said in a statement issued along with photographs of multiple bullet holes on the cultural center of the village of Khnatsakh. It called on the Azerbaijani side to investigate the incident and come up with “public clarifications.”
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry dismissed the report as “disinformation.” It said its troops “take adequate measures only in response to provocations by the Armenian armed forces.”
The incident was reported two weeks after a residential house in Khnatasakh belonging to the head of the village administration was struck by gunfire.
Residents of Khnatsakh and the nearby village of Khoznavar have reported nightly gunfire from Azerbaijani army positions for almost a month. According to them, it usually starts after 10 p.m. and continues through the night, keeping villagers on edge.
“Everyone is scared,” Kamel Ohanian, a woman from Khnatsakh, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Another local resident, who did not want to be identified, claimed that more local houses have been damaged by gunshots than is acknowledged by the Defense Ministry in Yerevan.
The ministry has consistently downplayed the truce violations, saying that they are largely “irregular” and “off-target.” Deputy Defense Minister Arman Sargsian stuck to this line when he spoke with journalists on Monday.
“The shootings that sometimes occur are unaimed, undirected shots, and I can say they are few in number,” said Sargsian.
The cross-border gunfire, which has also been heard by residents of several other Armenian border villages in the last two weeks, began days after Baku started accusing Armenian troops of violating the ceasefire regime on a virtually daily basis. The accusations denied by the Armenian military followed official announcements on March 13 that the two conflicting sides have bridged their differences on the text of a bilateral peace treaty. Baku has made clear that it will not sign the treaty without securing more Armenian concessions.
Armenian opposition figures have accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government of underreporting the situation along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. They say the government is reluctant to admit that unilateral concessions already made by Pashinian will not end the conflict with Azerbaijan anytime soon.