The countries have fought two wars and engaged in scores of violent clashes over the status of the region of Nagorno Karabakh since 1988, leading to the deaths of thousands of people
by Peoples Dispatch
An unknown number of soldiers have been killed in fresh clashes between state forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan near the Lachin corridor in the afternoon of Tuesday, April 11. The cause of the fresh clashes is not clear with both sides accusing the other of provocation.
The clashes started at around 4 pm on Tuesday and lasted till 7 pm local time near the Lachin corridor, which connects Armenia with the Nagorno Karabakh region. The corridor has been the subject of intense legal and military confrontation between both the countries for some time.
In February, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) asked Azerbaijan to guarantee free movement across the corridor after Armenia claimed that Azerbaijan had prevented movement for months, causing a humanitarian crisis for the ethnically Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh.
Since December 2022, hundreds of protesters, calling themselves environmental activists, have gathered in the narrow corridor opposing Armenian mining activities in the region.
Following the clashes on Tuesday, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the armed forces of Armenia, “from the direction of the Digh settlement of the Gorus district,” subjected the Azerbaijan army’s opposing positions stationed in the direction of the Lachin district to intensive fire. While not specifying any numbers, the statement claimed that the attack caused deaths and injuries among Azerbaijani servicemen.
Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Iran Ali Alizada claimed in a twitter post that at least three Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in the clashes.
According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, four of its soldiers were killed and six others were wounded in the Azerbaijani attack. It also issued a video claiming that its forces engaged in engineering work were approached by the Azerbaijani servicemen who opened fire on them.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars (1994 and 2020) over Nagorno Karabakh, which is legally Azerbaijan’s territory but is inhabited by majority ethnic Armenians. In 1988, the ethnic Armenians broke away from Azerbaijan—calling themselves the Artsakh republic—supported by the Armenian military. Thousands of people have been killed in the wars and the military clashes that have broken out between the two sides from time to time. Clashes have not stopped despite a ceasefire deal in 2020 and the presence of Russian peacekeepers in the region since then.