Sharjah24 - AFP: Armenia's leader on Thursday accused Azerbaijani troops of crossing the southern border and trying to stake claim to territory, in a new escalation of tensions between the arch foes.
Last year Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The six-week conflict claimed some 6,000 lives and ended after Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades.
In the early hours of Thursday, Armenia's acting prime minister Nikol Pashinyan accused Azerbaijan of new transgressions as he convened an emergency meeting of his security council.
Pashinyan said Azerbaijan's troops had advanced more than three kilometres (two miles) into southern Armenia and were trying to "lay siege" to Lake Sev Lich that is shared by the two countries.
"It is an encroachment on the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia," Pashinyan said. "This is an act of subversive infiltration."
He said Armenian soldiers had responded with "appropriate tactical manoeuvres" but stressed that the latest tensions should be settled through negotiations.
Azerbaijan's foreign ministry termed Pashinyan's claims provocative, saying the country's "border troops are taking positions that belong to Azerbaijan, in the Lachin and Kalbajar districts."
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