By Mark Dovich
Armenia’s Defense Ministry said four soldiers were killed and one wounded Tuesday in clashes with Azerbaijani troops in the southern Syunik region, marking Armenia’s first combat deaths this year.
Azerbaijani forces opened fire on Armenian positions near the small village of Nerkin Hand at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, the ministry said. By 9:30 a.m., the fighting had stopped.
Earlier, the ministry had put the number of soldiers killed in action at two. The wounded soldier’s injuries are not life-threatening.
Azerbaijan took control of swaths of territory around Nerkin Hand, a strategically located border village, during its September 2022 attack on Armenia. In total, Azerbaijan has occupied at least 83 square miles of Armenian territory since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, CivilNet has estimated.
Since the collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh last September, attention has shifted to Syunik, a strategically important region that has become the focus of mounting fears in Armenia that an Azerbaijani invasion may be imminent. Syunik gives Armenia a land border with Iran, while separating mainland Azerbaijan from its Nakhichevan exclave.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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