Defense Ministry refutes reports on border incident
By Sara Rajabova
Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry has dismissed the reports about the incident on the contact line between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces.
The ministry told Trend news agency on July 31 that Armenian media's information about the border incident is groundless.
Armenian media reported that armed incident occurred on the contact line between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops on July 31, in which two Armenian servicemen were killed.
The Armenian armed forces have recently escalated the situation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops. The Armenian armed forces don't hesitate to fire at the civilians, who live in the villages located near the frontline.
The units of Armenian armed forces shelled Alibayli village of the Tovuz region on July 25. As a result of the shelling, a teenager and an old man were wounded and taken to hospital for treatment.
Last week, the Armenian military killed a resident of Azerbaijan's Tartar region while he was fishing in Tartar River in the Ashagi Chayli village.
In late June, five civilians were wounded as a result of Armenian armed forces' shelling of the houses and fields in the border villages.
For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994, but long-standing efforts by U.S., Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its pullout from the neighboring country's territories.