Movses Akopyan: in 2013, count of shots at the forefront in Nagorno-Karabakh went down

During their New Year visits to military units, officials of Nagorno-Karabakh recorded violations of the ceasefire. Compared with 2012, 2013 saw a decreased number of shots at the frontline, but an increased number of attacks from heavy sniper weapons, said Lieutenant General Movses Akopyan, the head of the Ministry of Defence of Nagorno-Karabakh.

"In 2013, we registered 10,867 shots against 13,609 shots in 2012," said the minister at a press conference on the results of the year. According to his story, in 2013, two soldiers were killed by Azeri snipers; however, these losses were caused by the soldiers breaking safety rules themselves.

On December 30, legislative and executive officials of Nagorno-Karabakh visited the border posts along the whole contact line in order to congratulate soldiers with the Christmas and New Year. During these events, they registered violations of the ceasefire by the Azerbaijani party. In particular, in the Martouni direction 11 shots were heard within half an hour.

Let us note here that the routine monitoring conducted by the OSCE Minsk Group, no violations of ceasefire were revealed.

Let us remind you that on December 28 Azerbaijan accused Armenia of breaking the ceasefire. According to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Azerbaijan, a serviceman of the armed forces of this country Sarkhan Vagif oglu Gasymov perished on December 27 at the contact line of the armed forces in the conflict zone.