Azerbaijan says Armenia shelled positions near disputed territory

Azerbaijan accused Armenia on Saturday of shelling its positions near the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, where the two neighbors have been fighting on and off for 30 years, the Tass news agency reported.

The Azeri defense ministry said it responded with fire after Armenia attacked troops in the Lachin and Kalbajar regions in the west of the region with artillery fire. The Armenian Defense Ministry denied the accusation, Interfax news agency reported. The dispute over the region, a mountainous region of Azerbaijan controlled by ethnic Armenians since the 1990s, escalated into a six-week war in 2020 in which Azeri troops regained chunks of territory. After Russia brokered a ceasefire, the two sides agreed to work on a peace plan but periodically accuse each other of firing artillery shells across the border. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met separately with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday to try to push the former Soviet republics towards peace.

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