Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of cease-fire violation

Baku has accused Armenia of violating a cease-fire along the border with Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry issued a statement, saying that the incident took place on January 23 while visiting officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were monitoring the border in Azerbaijan's Fizuli district. No one was injured.

Another OSCE working group was monitoring the border on the Nagorno-Karabakh side on the same day.

In Yerevan, Defense Minister Seiran Ohanian said at a cabinet session on January 23 that tensions along the border remain, adding that "we react only to aimed gunfire."

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which local Armenian separatists, backed by

Yerevan, seized from Azerbaijan in the 1990s.

Sporadic shooting along the border -- often claiming lives on both sides -- has been common since the cease-fire was announced in 1994.

ANN.Az