Residents of one such village, Movses, spoke of more intensive-than-usual gunshots fired by Azerbaijani troops in the morning. They said the target of the gunshots was not immediately clear.
“They always opened fire after midnight [in recent weeks,]” one of them, Zaven Papian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But today they for the first time fired in the morning.”
Movses is located hundreds of kilometers northwest of two other border villages, Khnatsakh and Khoznavar, that are at the epicenter of Azerbaijani truce violations reported for the last two months. Several local houses have been damaged by what local residents call nightly gunfire. They say they are now scared of not only spending nights in their homes but also working in their fields.
“It’s the same thing every night,” one man from Khoznavar said by phone. “They fire at the village.”
Commenting on the gunfire reported from Movses, the Armenian Defense Ministry said “irregular, non-targeted shooting is sometimes recorded along the border.”
“In the event of intensive, significant, or, in other words, purposeful or targeted violations of the ceasefire, we issue official statements,” it told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Arman Yeghoyan, a senior lawmaker from the ruling Civil Contract party, also downplayed the gunshots, saying he hopes Armenians have “strong nerves” and will not panic.
“These shootings are also aimed at disturbing public peace [in Armenia,] and I hope that you will not contribute to this disturbance of public peace by spreading panic,” Yeghoyan told journalists.
Critics of the Armenian government say it is simply reluctant to admit that the unilateral concessions made by it to Baku will not end the conflict with Azerbaijan anytime soon.
The cross-border fire began days after Azerbaijan started accusing Armenian troops of violating the ceasefire regime. The accusations denied by the Armenian military followed official announcements on March 13 that the two conflicting sides have bridged their differences on the text of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
The Azerbaijani leadership has made clear that it will not sign the treaty without securing more Armenian concessions. Armenian opposition figures and pundits have suggested that the truce violations are aimed at forcing Yerevan to make those concessions or preparing the ground for a large-scale military attack on Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian again ruled out the possibility of such an attack late last week.