AZERBAIJANI SOLDIER SAID KILLED NEAR DISPUTED REGION
Agence France Presse — English
October 21, 2006 Saturday 6:04 PM GMT
An Azerbaijani soldier has been killed by fire from ethnic Armenian
forces near the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region, the defense ministry
in Baku said Saturday.
The 26-year-old, Arif Aliyev, died on the Azerbaijani side of a
ceasefire line that has been in place since a temporary accord was
reached between Baku and Yerevan over the disputed region in 1994.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-year war over the Armenian-majority
enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, which said it was seceding from Soviet
Azerbaijan in the early 1980s.
The conflict claimed 25,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands
of people, ending in the 1994 ceasefire.
Tensions have remained high and incidents occur regularly, with the
status of the Armenian-controlled region still unresolved.