A number of Armenian military posts along the Armenia-Azerbaijan state border in the Tavush marz near the district of Berd were attacked by special Azerbaijani units on the morning of January 23, at approximately 9:00 A.M. Artsrun Hovhannisyan, the spokesperson of the Armenian Ministry of Defense wrote about this on his Facebook page.
Hovhannisyan said that corresponding units of the Armenian army were able to detect the infiltration attempt, after which a pitched battle took place between the two sides that lasted about half an hour. “The adversary was pushed back, suffering a number of casualties and was not able to fulfill their mission, however, sadly the Armenian side has two casualties and a number of injured. Lieutenant Karen Galstyan and conscript Artak Sargsyan were killed. Armenia’s Defense Ministry shares the deep pain of our lost soldiers and expresses its solidarity with their families and relatives. The entire responsibility and the ensuing consequences of the tensions remain on the conscience of Azerbaijan’s military and political leadership,” said Artsrun Hovhannisyan. In his words, the adversary’s operations and its tactics of continuing attacks and attempted incursions along the entire length of the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact and the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border contribute to the destabilization of the situation.
“By neglecting their huge losses, which they are unrelentingly covering up, they continue their militarily pointless incursion attempts. During the course of the night they have violated the ceasefire regime more than 300 times,” Hovhannisyan wrote.
According to a press release by the Nagorno Karabakh Republic’s Defense Ministry, the Karabakh Defense Army did not suffer any losses despite the numerous incursion attempts along the western and northwestern directions of the Line of Contact. According to preliminary information, the Azerbaijani side suffered three losses.
Since the beginning of 2015, tensions along the state border and Line of Contact have been extremely high. According to the defense ministries of Armenia and Karabakh, Azerbaijan has continued to grossly violate the ceasefire regime by firing on frontline positions of the Armenian Armed Forces using a variety of weapons, by sending in saboteurs, and firing on peaceful civilians living in border towns and villages.
