Six Armenian soldiers have been killed in a shooting incident, the Defence Ministry said today, and local media reports said one soldier had killed five others before taking his own life.
The ministry said in a statement the incident occurred on Wednesday and resulted from “violation of guard duty”.
A criminal case had been opened but it gave no further details and did not say where the shooting took place.
Local media reports said the unit was based in the rebel territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian-populated region that broke away from Azerbaijan with Armenian backing in the early 1990s.
Some reports said a conscript had been found asleep at his post and that he or a fellow soldier opened fire on officers trying to punish the conscript. Such shootings are not uncommon in the armed forces of former Soviet republics, where abuse and corruption are rife.
A ceasefire ended fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1994, but a peace deal has never been reached and Armenian and Azeri soldiers frequently trade fire over the tense frontline.
Reuters