“Today at 00:05 (local time), Azerbaijan fired at the military posts of Armenia with artillery and large-caliber weapons,” the Armenian Defense Ministry said, adding that drones were also used in the attack.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry accused Armenia of “large-scale sabotage” near the border, adding that its military positions were attacked. “There are casualties among (Azerbaijani) soldiers,” he added, without naming numbers.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called for an end to the standoff and assured the US was “deeply concerned” about the situation.
“As we have already made clear, the solution is not in military conflict,” Blinken said in a statement. “We call for an immediate cessation of all hostilities.”
Reports of skirmishes at the border have been frequent since the war between the two countries over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region ended in 2020. Azerbaijan with an Armenian population.
Six weeks of fighting in 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire. Under the deal, Armenia ceded some of the territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow sent some 2,000 troops to oversee a fragile truce.
