STEPANAKERT (RFE/RL)—The number of Armenian soldiers killed in skirmishes with Azerbaijani forces around Nagorno-Karabakh has drastically fallen this year despite increased ceasefire violations along the “line of contact,” a top military official in Stepanakert said on Wednesday.
Lieutenant-General Movses Hakobian, the commander of Karabakh’s Defense Army, said only two of soldiers were shot dead by Azerbaijani snipers in the course of 2012, compared with 11 such cases reported in 2011.
“The measures which we have taken to ensure that our soldiers perform their service on the frontline safely have borne fruit,” Hakobian told a news conference. “Today soldiers can confidently carry out observations on all Defense Army positions and they face no dangers if they don’t violate safety rules.”
Hakobian added that “large-scale work to reinforce frontline positions” has also helped the Karabakh Armenian military substantially reduce the number of incursions by Azerbaijani commando units. “This year there were seven attempts by enemy sabotage groups to penetrate our positions but only one of them partly succeeded in inflicting damage on Defense Army servicemen,” he said. “In the six other cases, those groups were detected and pushed back to their starting positions after suffering casualties.”
Armenian military fortifications along Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan have also reportedly been beefed up this year. Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian personally inspected in August what his press office described as “exemplary defense structures and posts” constructed at various border sections.
why are they dying for a turkish name? i know, there are theories that karabakh is in fact the turkification of an armenian compound word, but nevertheless it is grasped as a turkish word today so say artsakh dammit
Azeri snipers should be responded by tanks, and hostile commando attempts by taking over
the whole areas surronding them for good. In short we should boomerang them 100 folds!