At least 15 men were killed and 3 wounded in a fire that broke out in an army unit in the village of Azat in the eastern Armenian province of Gegharkunik.
“According to initial data, 15 soldiers were killed as a result of the fire that broke out in the barracks of a corporate of engineers and snipers of an Army unit,” reads a statement from the Ministry of Defense released Thursday. He added that the 3 wounded men were in serious condition.
The fire broke out at 1:30 a. m. (09:30 GMT) on Thursday “in cases to be determined,” the ministry said.
The incident follows an explosion in August last year, in which at least 16 other people were killed and about 60 injured. The blast destroyed a warehouse at a market in Yerevan, the Armenian capital.
Azat is close to the border with Azerbaijan, a country that was at war with Armenia in 2020 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The region identifies itself worldwide as Azerbaijani, but is populated and controlled by its ethnic Armenian majority.
The six-week standoff killed at least 6,500 others and ended a truce brokered by Russia. Armenia ceded a swath of territory it had controlled for decades in a move that sparked a political crisis.
While large-scale fighting is over, new border clashes continue to occur. In September last year, dozens of Armenians were reportedly killed.
Tensions between the two former Soviet republics have flared again in recent weeks when Azerbaijani civilians claiming to be environmental activists demonstrated along the Lachin Corridor, the highway linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. Yerevan called the action a blockade approved by the Azerbaijani government.