Azerbaijan Says Soldier Killed In Clash Along Armenian Border

Azerbaijan says one of its soldiers has been killed as a result of a clash with an Armenian "sabotage" group.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said in a February 4 statement that Imran Mirzayev had been killed in a gunfight near the Azerbaijani-Armenian border on February 3.

According to the statement, three Armenian soldiers were also killed in the clash.

The Armenian Defense Ministry rejected Baku's statement, saying that "the information about the clash along the border, in which three Armenian soldiers were allegedly killed, does not correspond to reality."

Baku and Yerevan have been locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh for over two decades.

Armenia-backed separatists seized the mainly ethnic Armenian-populated region during a war in the early 1990s that killed some 30,000 people.

International diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict have brought little progress.

With reporting by Interfax