- Thomas O'Reilly
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After some initial confusion, EU officials confirmed that on August 14th, Tuesday evening, a European observer mission in the disputed region around the Azerbaijan-Armenia border had come under fire in what Armenian officials immediately pinned on the Azeri army.
According to reports and subsequent footage that emerged from the incident, European observers were temporarily pinned down by what was believed to be small arms fire from Azeri forces while on the Armenian side of the border, where they had been conducting their duties.
There is growing international pressure on Baku to refrain from what many experts believe is a developing genocide against trapped ethnic Armenians in the Lachin corridor, where the Azeri army is conducting a blockade.
The EU deployed 100 unarmed observers last December following Azerbaijan’s successful border war against Armenia in the hotly contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, where the Azeri government is accused of ethnic cleansing against Armenians living on newly acquired lands.
Tuesday’s incident occurred near Verin Shorzha in Armenia, six kilometres from the Azeri frontier, with the mission’s social media account initially denying that any altercation had occurred. The EU’s foreign policy department, EEAS, has so far refused to give a full statement on the matter, but there is growing understanding that Brussels’ soft stance on Azeri aggression may be about to end.
The Azeri defence ministry has already flatly denied that its troops fired at the EU mission, blaming Armenian disinformation and saying that such an attack was impossible due to the fact that the details of observer missions are well known in order to prevent incidents like this from occurring.
Clashes between Azeri and Armenian forces are common after last year’s two-day war, where Azerbaijan seized strategic heights near the town of Jermuk and occupied 140 square kilometres of Armenian territory. The Azeri ambassador to Brussels was summoned by the EU to account for social media threats to shoot EU officials last month, as many predict EU-Azeri relations are set to take a diplomatic nosedive.
The UN Security Council is set to meet Wednesday, August 16th, to discuss the worsening plight of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, with the Armenian government accusing Azerbaijan of preventing the flow of vital supplies to the enclave.
Armenian officials have called for the EU to mount an airlift to assist Armenians trapped in Lachin by the Azeri blockade, with Brussels previously accused of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by Azerbaijan due to the strategic importance of Azeri gas.