BAKU, Azerbaijan

The Azerbaijani army on Monday discovered a minefield in the eastern Lachin region, the country’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

The army’s engineering units detected over 900 anti-personnel mines while conducting terrain reconnaissance in the “northwestern direction of the Saribaba high ground,” a ministry statement said.

It said that the mines, laid by "illegal Armenian armed detachments," were “neutralized” by a specialized team.

“All the mines detected in this direction were produced in Armenia after the Patriotic War, in 2021,” the statement said.

After an Azerbaijani soldier was killed as a result of the provocation carried out by the illegal Armenian forces in Karabakh on Aug. 3, the Azerbaijani army carried out a retaliatory measure called "revenge.”

"As a result of the 'revenge' retaliatory measure carried out by Azerbaijani Army Units, the Girkhgiz peak, as well as Saribaba along the Karabakh ridge of the Lesser Caucasus and a number of other important heights, were taken under control,” the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry had said on Aug. 4.

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh (Upper Karabakh), a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

During the conflict in fall 2020, Azerbaijan liberated several cities and nearly 300 settlements and villages that had been occupied by Armenia for nearly three decades.

A Russian-brokered deal in November 2020 brought an end to the conflict.