Photographs released by the ministry showed a bullet hole on a window of the house located in the village of Khoznavar. The gunshot was fired from nearby Azerbaijani army positions, the ministry said, urging Baku to investigate the incident.
“They shoot every day,” a Khoznavar resident told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service by phone.
The house targeted by Azerbaijani forces belongs to an elderly single woman, he said, adding that she was not wounded by the cross-border fire.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry dismissed the reports as “disinformation.” It again claimed that its troops never fire at civilian homes or other facilities.
Several other houses in Khoznavar and the nearby village of Khnatsakh have also been reportedly damaged over the last two months by what local residents call nightly gunfire. Azerbaijani truce violations have also been reported, albeit less frequently, from other sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
They began shortly after official announcements on March 13 that Baku and Yerevan have bridged their differences on the text of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. The Azerbaijani leadership has made clear that it will not sign the treaty without securing more Armenian concessions.
Armenian opposition figures and pundits have suggested that the truce violations are aimed at forcing Yerevan to make those concessions or preparing the ground for a large-scale military attack on Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian again ruled out the possibility of such an attack on Wednesday.
Pashinian did not comment on the latest gunshots in Khoznavar during a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan on Thursday. The secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, claimed to be unaware of the reported damage to the local house when he spoke to journalists after attending the meeting.
“Frankly, I’m not yet aware of details of what you are talking about,” said Grigorian.
Meanwhile, a senior pro-government lawmaker, Armen Khachatrian, insisted that Armenian troops deployed along the border are right to not return fire in such cases.
“The Armenian government’s position is that everything must be done to conclude the peace treaty and that escalatory actions should be avoided,” Khachatrian told reporters.
Pashinian’s government has consistently downplayed the significance of the ceasefire violations. Its critics maintain that it is simply reluctant to admit that unilateral Armenian concessions already made to Baku will not end the conflict with Azerbaijan anytime soon.