ARMENIAN SOLDIER ‘KILLED BY AZERI SNIPER’

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Sept 25 2006

The Armenian Defense Ministry said Monday that an Azerbaijani sniper
had killed an Armenian soldier.

Warrant officer Garnik Melian was fatally shot in the chest Saturday
near the Armenian city of Ijevan in what the ministry called an
Azerbaijani cease-fire violation.

The two countries are at odds over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an
ethnic Armenian territory inside Azerbaijan. A cease-fire agreement was
reached in 1994 after six years of fighting, and the territory is now
under the control of ethnic Armenians, whose troops face Azerbaijani
forces across a half-mile-wide (kilometer-wide) no man’s land.

Clashes break out sporadically along the tense border, and the
countries’ presidents have traded increasingly bellicose statements.