Today, for the second day in a row, new clashes broke out on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, threatening the talks scheduled for the weekend between the leaders of the two countries in Brussels.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said this afternoon that Azerbaijani forces “fired with heavy weapons at Armenian positions near the village of Kut” in the border region of Gegharkunik. Earlier, the same source said that the Azerbaijani army “violated the ceasefire” in Sotk (including the Armenian community near the border) using drones.

“Two members of the Armenian Armed Forces were wounded,” one of them is in critical condition, the ministry added.

For its part, Baku accuses the Armenian forces of “opening fire from mortars (…) on Azerbaijani positions” on the border of the two countries.

On Thursday, clashes on the border between two countries that have laid claim to the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh for three decades killed an Azerbaijani soldier and wounded four Armenians.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are due to meet in Brussels on Sunday for talks under the auspices of the European Union. Pashinyan on Thursday accused Azerbaijan of seeking to “undermine the talks,” saying there were “little” chances of signing a peace deal at the meeting.

The draft agreement “is still at a preliminary stage and it is too early to talk about a possible signing,” he explained.

Source: APE-MPE, AFP.