Three soldiers killed over Karabakh as warring sides accuse each other of violations

Three soldiers were killed on Wednesday over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh as the warring sides accused each other of ceasefire violations.

Arch enemies Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars -- in 2020 and in the 1990s -- over Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Six weeks of fighting in the autumn of 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement.

Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Russia deployed some 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce, but tensions persist despite a ceasefire agreement.

On Wednesday, the Azerbaijani defence ministry said Karabakh troops targeted Azerbaijani army positions in the district of Lachin, which is under the supervision of the Russian peacekeeping force, killing an Azerbaijani conscript.

The foreign ministry in Baku said that the "bloody incident" demonstrated that Armenia did not respect the ceasefire agreement.

"All responsibility for the incident in Azerbaijan lies with military and political leadership of Armenia, which has not yet withdrawn its illegal armed formations from the territory of the neighbouring state," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The army of the breakaway statelet accused Azerbaijan of violating a ceasefire and killing two soldiers and wounding another 14.

Karabakh declared a "partial mobilisation", the army said in a statement, adding that the situation was "relatively stable" Wednesday evening.

"Measures are being taken together with Russian peacekeepers to stabilise the situation," the Karabakh army said.