An exchange of fire on the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia has killed seven soldiers from both sides in a region disputed between the two countries and the site of regular clashes, Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities announced on Tuesday, AFP reported.

The two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus clashed in a brief war in 2020 over control of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, won by Baku, without ever reaching a peace deal. Deadly clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh or on the border between the two countries continue to flare up periodically.

According to the statement of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan published on Tuesday evening, during the “suppression of the provocation of the Armenian side”, three servicemen of the army were killed, at this stage there are no reports of injuries.

On the Armenian side, “four soldiers were killed, six more were wounded,” the Ministry of Defense in Yerevan reports.

According to the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan, “positions of the Armenian army, located near the city of Dig (on the border between the two countries), opened fire on the positions of the Azerbaijanis,” who “returned fire.”

According to an Armenian statement, “at 16:00 (12:00 GMT) on Tuesday, Azerbaijani soldiers opened fire on Armenian soldiers who were carrying out engineering work.”

As a result of these escalating tensions, Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan, who was in Brussels, cut short his visit to return to Armenia, his ministry said in a statement.

A mountainous region populated mostly by Armenians who broke away from Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh continues to poison relations between Yerevan and Baku. The 2020 conflict resulted in a military defeat for the Armenians and a ceasefire agreement supported by Russia, which deployed peacekeeping troops. They noted that they had recorded “two violations of the ceasefire”.

Since then, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have met several times, including through the mediation of the EU and the US, to discuss a peace agreement. However, there are no final results at this stage.

The first conflict between the two sides in the early 1990s claimed 30,000 lives and ended in an Armenian victory with Moscow’s support. Azerbaijanis took revenge in the fall of 2020 during the second war, in which 6,500 people died, which allowed them to regain many territories.