Armenian soldier killed by Azeri sniper

Warrant officer Garnik Melian was fatally shot in the chest Saturday near the Armenian city of Ijevan in what the ministry called an Azerbaijani cease-fire violation.

The two countries are at odds over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian territory inside Azerbaijan. A cease-fire agreement was reached in 1994 after six years of fighting, and the territory is now under the control of ethnic Armenians, whose troops face Azerbaijani forces across a half-mile-wide (kilometer-wide) no man's land.

Clashes break out sporadically along the tense border, and the countries' presidents have traded increasingly bellicose statements. AP

/RFE/RL/