New border tension Armenia – Azerbaijan. The two countries accused each other of firing on their border on Thursday, as international efforts to reconcile the two Caucasus states, which have been at odds for nearly 30 years over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, are intensifying.

“Azerbaijani forces opened artillery and mortar fire on the Armenian positions located in the Sotk region” in eastern Armenia, the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Three Armenian soldiers were injured by the fire, it notes, clarifying that Armenian forces are taking “appropriate defensive measures”.

At the same time, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry accused Armenia of opening fire with “large-caliber weapons” on Azeri positions on the border, denouncing a “provocation”.

“Despite warnings about the need to end the provocations (…) the Armenian side violated reinstate the ceasefire”, notes the ministry in a statement, in which it adds that an Azeri soldier was injured yesterday, Wednesday, in the evening by gunfire and that “mortar throwing” continued this morning.

This incident occurs at a time when members of the international community are making efforts to ease tensions between the two neighboring countries and restart peace negotiations.

The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev respectively, will meet on Sunday in Brussels, according to the European Union under whose auspices the meeting is taking place, after four days of intensive talks in early May in Washington between in delegations of the two countries under the auspices of the USA.

According to Washington, during these talks there was “tangible progress” and now a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan is “visible”.

The two former Soviet republics of the Caucasus were involved in two wars, in the 1990s and 2020s, for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region inhabited mainly by Armenians that seceded from Azerbaijan more than three decades ago.

Already high tensions escalated further when Baku announced on April 23 that it had installed a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor road, the only link between Armenia and the separatist enclave, which has been under blockade for months resulting in shortages and power outages.