Azernews.Az

Residents of a Caspian coastal village in Azerbaijan's southern Lankaran district clashed on Thursday with police after border guards tried to prevent local fishermen from casting their nets beyond the two-mile limit, according to the Interior Ministry.

The ministry said in a statement that nine fishermen were detained by the State Border Service officers.

Some 150 people then sought to secure their release, and a clash ensued between the villagers and Interior Ministry troops. "Employees of interior bodies who arrived at the scene tried to appease the villagers and called on them not to violate public order. But a group of them resisted and inflicted to the police officers injuries of different severity," the statement says.

The ministry said three of the nine fishermen were released, but six remain in detention on suspicion of resisting government officials and resorting to violence and hooliganism.

The residents of the Narimanabad village claimed that shortly after they gathered outside the border crossing to demand their fellow villagers’ release, interior troops and military machinery were pulled into the village. The villagers told Radio Liberty that law enforcers used rubber bullets and tear gas, injuring two of them.

A similar incident occurred between fishers and border guards in 2010.

Border guards do not allow villagers to fish more than two miles away from the seashore, a measure they explain by local residents’ crossing into the territorial waters of neighboring countries to engage in illegal fishing and even drug trafficking.