One of the Armenian military said on Friday that one of its soldiers was killed and eight more were wounded in a clash with Azerbaijani forces on the border between the two countries, where tensions have simmered for months.
Armenia's Defense Ministry blamed the casualties on aggressive actions by Azerbaijan's troops, accusing them of attacking Armenian positions on the eastern part of the border. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed that Armenian forces opened fire first.
Both countries reported a similar clash on Thursday, with Armenia reporting one casualty and Azerbaijan reporting one casualty.
Since a 1994 separatist war, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-old dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.
Moscow brokered a peace deal in November 2020 to end six weeks of fighting, during which more than 6,600 people were killed. Azerbaijan was able to regain control over large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas that the Armenian-backed separatists controlled because of the Russia-brokered truce.
Tensions have been building on the shared border between the two nations since May, when Armenia protested what it described as an incursion by Azerbaijani troops into its territory. Azerbaijan has insisted that its soldiers were deployed to what it considers its territory in areas where the border has yet to be demarcated. There have been reports of clashes since.
Vladimir Putin hosted leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan last month for talks in Sochi. After the meeting, Putin said that the three leaders agreed to create mechanisms for setting the boundaries between the two countries by the end of the year.