A shootout between Azerbaijani soldiers and police in the breakaway Armenian province of Nagorno-Karabakh killed at least three people on Sunday, authorities said.

Both sides gave different versions of what happened. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said the incident occurred when soldiers went to search vehicles suspected of carrying weapons on a road linking Armenia to Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Armenian Interior Ministry described the shooting as “an ambush” and said three officers from the passport division were killed.

Azerbaijan said its forces “suffered casualties” but gave no exact figure.

The incident adds to tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which fought a war over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 that killed more than 6,000 people. The war ended with a Russian-brokered armistice, under which Armenia had to cede territories in the region.

Nagorno-Karabakh is in Azerbaijan, but Armenian-backed ethnic Armenian forces have controlled the region and surrounding territories since 1994.

The deal that ended the 2020 war left a road called the Lachin Corridor as the only permitted link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, used to supply the region’s 120,000 people.

However, traffic on this road was largely blocked by protesters believed to be supported by Azerbaijani authorities.

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