Armenian Defense Ministry covers up real losses
By Laman Sadigova
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has refuted the reports spread in Armenian media with reference to their Defense Ministry, which desperately attempts to diminish its losses in the contact line of troops.
The official data even less than the figure that the Armenian media indicates. For instance, a number of media outlets reported 83 soldiers to be dead and 100 to be wounded during the military operations in the contact line with Azerbaijan, whose 20 percent of territory is under Armenian control.
According to the preliminary data, the real number of losses from the part of Armenia exceeded 276 in 2015, Trend news agency reports.
However, the spokesperson of the Defense Ministry reported about death of 57 people in the Armenian side of the frontline in 2015 -- a figure which does not coincide with official data provided during the year.
The Armenian Defense Ministry provides unfounded and fake data in an effort to deceive its people about losses that they bear on the frontline with Azerbaijani armed forces, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said
The year of 2016 also began unsuccessfully for Armenia, which tried to silently cover them up. In this regards, the Azerbaijani defense ministry raised the case of Armenian soldier Edgar Avetisyan, who committed suicide on January 19, 2016, but the Armenian side decided not to disclose the issue.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
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