Armenia's Defense Ministry said Saturday it would use artillery and missiles to repel attacks by Azerbaijan after four soldiers in the secessionist region of Nagorno-Karabakh were killed in combat with Baku's forces.
Armenia said Azerbaijani forces killed four of its soldiers and wounded 16 others in Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within Azerbaijan but is populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.
"With the aim of stopping the enemy and impeding its actions, the Armenian armed forces will henceforth employ artillery and missiles against the positions of Azerbaijani units, all movements of troops and military equipment," the ministry said in a statement.
Yerevan warned "the international community and the OSCE Minsk Group (which is seeking a negotiated solution to the conflict) that the use on the part of Azerbaijan of artillery in the contact zone gives rise to a new situation, another step toward the start of full-fledged combat actions."
Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, accused Armenia of using heavy weapons, including 60-millimeter and 82-millimeter mortars, during Friday's combat.
One Azerbaijani soldier was killed and four others were wounded by shrapnel during the fighting, Baku said.
The escalation of tension in Nagorno-Karabakh and on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border comes despite a meeting Saturday in New York, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting, between Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan and Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov.
Both sides traded accusations after the meeting, with Yerevan saying Azerbaijan refuses to accept mechanisms to investigate armed clashes and Baku maintaining that Armenia is seeking to torpedo the peace process with provocations in the contact zone.
The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh goes back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the region's Armenian population sought unification with Armenia, leading to a 1991-1994 war that left more than 25,000 people dead.
Armenian troops and their local allies now occupy the entire enclave and seven adjacent districts and have created a "security buffer" that represents just over a fifth of Azerbaijani territory.
EFE





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