July 30 (Reuters) – Azerbaijan on Saturday accused Armenia of shelling some of its positions near the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian news agency Tass reported.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Minister said he responded to artillery fire targeting Baku troops in the Lachin and Kelbajar regions in the west of the territory.
Quoted by the Russian agency Interfax, the Armenian Minister of Defense rejected these accusations.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous territory recognized as an integral part of Azerbaijan but populated mainly by Armenians, seceded during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
A 44-day war opposed the two former Soviet republics of the Caucasus in the fall of 2020 for control of the enclave, at the end of which Azerbaijan reconquered part of it.
The two countries agreed in November 2020 to a ceasefire under Russian mediation but regularly accuse each other of violating the truce. (Report David Ljunggren, French version Jean-Stphane Brosse)