1 contract serviceman, 3 civilians injured in Azeri shooting

PanARMENIAN.Net - The situation on the line of contact between Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh was tense on the evening and night of September 3; the number of shots, however, has decreased, a spokesperson for the Armenian Defense Ministry said.

According to Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Azeri troops opened fire on Tavush province, also damaging some villages.

“Three civilians and one contract serviceman were wounded in Vazashen and hospitalized afterwards,” the official told reporters.

Hovhannisyan refuted the earlier statement by Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev. “Hajiyev had the nerve to mention the international humanitarian law in full knowledge of Azerbaijan’s provoking the situation. We were falsely accused of opening fire while a wedding was in progress; meanwhile, they were shelling our villages, with the Armenian side’s retaliatory measures reported by their own media,” he said.

As Hovhannisyan noted in response to a question by RFE/RL Armenian Service on a possible threat of war, “from professional viewpoint, this is a war, though not as intense as it could have been. Anyway, no large-scale military operations are currently underway.”