Artsakh Forces Thwart Azerbaijani Incursion Attempt

Artsakh forces stationed in the Matuni district on the border with Azerbaijan thwarted an attempt by Azerbaijani forces to breach the frontline and enter into Artsakh proper early Thursday morning, according to the press office of the Artsakh Defense Ministry.

At around 2 a.m. local time, Artsakh forces repelled the incursion attempt resulting in casualties and losses on the Azerbaijani side. No losses were reported on the Artsakh side.

Armenia’s foreign ministry said that the attempt to breach the border was an effort to compensate for Azerbaijani failures on the diplomatic front.

“Baku tries to compensate its failures in diplomacy and on the international arena, deviate the attention from abuse of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Azerbaijan, by staging provocations on the line of contact,” the spokesman for Armenia’s Foreign Ministry Tigran Balayan said in a Tweet.

Artsakh human rights defender, ombudsman, said that the attempt by Azerbaijani forces could have been a direct response to an incident in Strasbourg involving President Serzh Sarkisian and an Azerbaijani member of parliament who attempted to provoke the Armenian president but was told to exercise restraint.
“They [the Azerbaijanis] will not rest as long as the policy of Armenophobia is dominating in Azerbaijan,” said the Artsakh Ombudsman Ruben Melikyan.

“We’ll have to be on alert for a long time. We definitely have to be committed to the respect for human rights. I think this is one of the guarantees of our truthfulness and justness,” the Ombudsman said.