Law-enforcement authorities said the shooting was provoked by a road rage incident on a highway passing through the town of Aparan, which degenerated the following day into a violent clash between two groups of young men.
The shooter, a 32-year-old resident of Yerevan, was arrested on Monday. The men killed and wounded by him reportedly lived in Aparan.
Four of the wounded men were taken to a hospital in Yerevan. RFE/RL’s Armenian Service tried to speak to their relatives there. But they refused to comment on the incident that shocked the community 55 kilometers north of Yerevan.
People randomly interviewed in Aparan were also reluctant to talk about its possible causes. “There has never been such a tragedy in Aparan before,” said one of them.
No official reason was given for national police chief Vahe Ghazarian’s decision to fire the head of the local police department.
Citing anonymous news sources, Armenian opposition figures and some media outlets claimed that the Aparan men were attacked because of publicly swearing at Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. The attackers, they alleged, are related to a local government official and an Aparan-based parliamentarian affiliated with Pashinian’s Civil Contract party.
Both the officials and a Civil Contract spokesman angrily denied the allegations. The police likewise insisted that the shooting was not politically motivated.
Despite the denials, several hundred opposition members and supporters marched to the Civil Contract headquarters in Yerevan on Monday to condemn the killings. They accused Pashinian of encouraging violent reprisals against his detractors.