Azerbaijani military officials say two soldiers have been killed in fighting with the Armenian Army, the latest in a growing number of clashes over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Defense Ministry said that an officer and a soldier were killed on March 27 when Armenian forces tried to cross the state border.
Armenia disputed that account, however, saying Azerbaijani forces attacked several villages near their shared border, wounding one civilian over the weekend.
Ethnic violence in the region in the Soviet Union's waning days snowballed into full-scale war in the early 1990s that ended when ethnic Armenian forces took control of the mountainous territory. Аround 30,000 people were killed and many more displaced.
Despite years of efforts by France, Russia, and the United States, the dispute is still unresolved and fears persist of a wider conflict breaking out in the volatile region, which is a key transit point for European-bound oil and gas.