At least seven troops were killed in renewed fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia on Tuesday in the deadliest clash between the former Soviet republics this year.
Three Azerbaijani and four Armenian soldiers died in the fighting that erupted near the countries’ unmarked border, the defense ministries in Baku and Yerevan said. The sides blamed each other for the clash that was the deadliest since September, when more than 300 hundred died on both sides.
Several hours of fighting involving artillery and high-caliber machine guns had subsided by around 8 p.m. local time, according to reports from both sides.
The countries are locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority Armenian region that broke away from Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Armenians took over Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war in 1991-1994 that killed an estimated 30,000 people. Azerbaijan took back most of the territory during six weeks of fighting in 2020 before Russia brokered a cease-fire, deploying almost 2,000 troops to maintain peace.
Despite efforts led by Russia, the U.S. and the E.U., no peace agreement has been reached with sporadic fighting killing dozens in Nagorno-Karabakh and also along the Azerbaijan-Armenian border.
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(Bloomberg News writer Sara Khojoyan contributed to this report.)
