Agence France Presse — English
February 15, 2007 Thursday 2:48 PM GMT
Azerbaijani sniper kills Armenian officer: Armenia
An Azerbaijani sniper shot dead an Armenian officer on Wednesday near
the border between the two Caucasus countries, Armenia’s defence
ministry said on Thursday.
Ervand Pashikian, an army major, was killed in the northern Armenian
district of Noemberian by a shot coming from the Azerbaijani side of
the border, the ministry said.
Shooting incidents occur frequently along the Armenian-Azerbaijani
border, especially around the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh,
which Armenian forces seized from Azerbaijan in a 1990s war.
The two ex-Soviet republics signed a ceasefire in 1994, but have cut
direct economic and transport links and failed to negotiate a return
of the approximately one million people who were driven from their
homes.