Azerbaijan, Armenia Trade Accusations About Fire Attacks

AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA TRADE ACCUSATIONS ABOUT FIRE ATTACKS
by Sevindzh Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman

ITAR-TASS News Agency
March 9, 2006

The Azerbaijani Defence Ministry said that two villages in the
Kazakhsky district of Azerbaijan came under a fire attack from across
the border.

“The shooting stopped only after return fire,” the ministry’s spokesman
Ilgar Verdiyev told Itar-Tass on Thursday.

“On the whole, the positions of the national army located in this
districts have been shot up four times over the past 24 hours. The
shooting was done from two directions – from the Idzhevansky and
Noyamberyansky districts of Armenia. There are no losses among our
servicemen,” Verdiyev said.

Meanwhile, an Itar-Tass correspondent in Yerevan said that the Armenian
Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Seiran Shakhsuvaryan had denied
the fire attacks on Azerbaijani villages.

“The statements by the spokesman of the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry
does not correspond to reality,” he said.

He said that a “number of cases have been registered in the recent days
when units of the Azerbaijani army violated the ceasefire regime and
shot with firearms on border positions of the Armenian armed forces,”
Shakhsyvaryan said.