7 Soldiers Killed in Azerbaijan-Armenia Border Clashes

Azerbaijan and Armenia said on Tuesday that seven of their soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire that occurred at the border between the two arch-neighbors, who have been involved in a decades-old dispute over border lands.

"Intense fire was exchanged from the positions of the Armenian army deployed near the Dej area (at the common border between the two countries) at the positions of the Azerbaijani army," the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

The Armenian Ministry of Defense reported that four of its soldiers were killed and six others were wounded, accusing the Baku forces of having initiated the shooting.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been engaged in an armed conflict for decades to control Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-majority region in Azerbaijan. 

The latest hostilities between the two countries ended in 2020 with the signing of a truce sponsored by Russia. Under a Russian-brokered armistice agreement in the fall of 2020, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow deployed forces to oversee compliance with the armistice.