A shooting in Nagorno-Karabakh on March 5 left three Karabakhi Armenian police officers and two Azerbaijani soldiers dead. 

Naturally, Azerbaijan on the one hand and Karabakh and Armenia on the other are offering vastly different accounts of what happened. 

The incident comes just as Azerbaijan-Karabakh talks seemed to be picking up steam, and nearly three months into the blockade of Karabakh by Azerbaijani government-sponsored activists. 

Those activists are camped out near the town of Shusha, on the road that forms the Lachin corridor, Karabakh's only lifeline to Armenia and the outside world. 

The Azerbaijani defense ministry's account of the incident suggested that Armenian vehicles were attempting to bypass the blockade — which Baku denies is a blockade — in order to transport "military equipment, ammunition, and personnel" from Armenia to Karabakh. 

Azerbaijani army units had attempted to "stop and inspect" some such vehicles which had been using the "Khankandi-Khalfali-Turshu dirt road," it said. (Khankandi is the Azerbaijani name for Stepanakert, the administrative center of Nagorno-Karabakh.)

"The opposing side opened fire and there were casualties and injuries from both sides as a result of the firefight," it added. 

The ministry said that the only road that can be used between Armenia and Karabakh is the "Khankandi-Lachin road" and that the use of the detour constitutes a violation of the November 9, 2020 Russian-brokered peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

It called on the Russian peacekeeping contingent, deployed in the area under the same agreement, to intervene. 

Karabakh's de facto foreign ministry, meanwhile, said "a group of saboteurs from the Azerbaijani armed forces" crossed into Karabakh-administered territory and "committed an armed attack on a patrol car of the passport and visa directorate" of the Karabakh police, killing three officers and wounding another. 

This incursion represents a violation of the trilateral agreement, it said. 

Armenia's foreign ministry supported that version, adding that the police vehicle that was attacked was on its way from Stepanakert to villages inside Nagorno-Karabakh and that there was nothing in it besides documents and a service pistol. It dismissed as "absurd" Baku's accusation of personnel and weapons being transported from Armenia to Karabakh. 

Azerbaijan has long made such claims, including that Armenian and Karabakhi forces have continued to lay mines since the 2020 war that ended in Azerbaijan's victory.

The International Court of Justice, the top court of the United Nations, ruled on February 23 that Azerbaijan should ensure movement on the blockaded Lachin corridor. In its ruling it rejected Azerbaijan's request that the court demand new measures related to allegations that Armenian forces are continuing to plant land mines on Azerbaijani territory. 

A day before the clash, Azerbaijani media reported that an Azerbaijani soldier had been killed when a mine "planted by Armenians" blew up (the location of that incident was not reported).

Azerbaijan's defense ministry said the March 5 incident demonstrates the need for establishing Azerbaijani checkpoints on the Lachin corridor. 

This demand was issued recently by President Ilham Aliyev in parallel with moving back from Baku's demand for the establishment of a seamless transportation link from mainland Azerbaijan to the Nakhchivan exclave through Armenia known as the "Zangezur corridor."

Karabakh's foreign ministry said that the timing of the "attack" — four days after the most public yet meeting between Azerbaijani and Karabakhi representatives — indicated that there was no point in negotiations. 

"Through its actions Baku is openly demonstrating its rejection of talks as a means for resolving any issues," it said.