YEREVAN (RFE/RL)–Officials in Armenia’say two Russian border guard troops began shooting around "at random" in the northern city of Gumri killing one resident and wounding eight others on Wednesday. The Armenian interior minister said the two men attacked a "command point" at their nearby Russian border guard base to seize two submachine guns after getting "drunk." The assailants are reported to have been "neutralized" by local residents after the shooting and handed over to law-enforcement bodies. The authorities have launched an official inquiry into the incident.
Russian body guard troops have continued to patrol Armenia’s border with Turkey and Iran’since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. No such incidents have been reported before.