AT LEAST three people died in Sunday’s shootout between Azerbaijani soldiers and police of Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist ethnic Armenian enclave, according to Armenia’s Interior Ministry.

The two sides offered differing accounts: Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said the confrontation occurred when soldiers went to check vehicles suspected of transporting weapons on a dirt road from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert.

Armenia’s Interior Ministry described the shooting as an ambush and said three officers from the region’s passport division were killed.

Azerbaijan said its forces suffered losses but did not give numbers.

Tensions are already high between the two Caucasus neighbours, which fought a war over the territory in 2020 in which more than 6,000 people were killed.

The war ended with Armenia relinquishing territories surrounding the enclave.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan, but ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia had controlled the region and surrounding territories since 1994.

The agreement to end the 2020 war left a winding road known as the Lachin corridor as the only authorised connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, a lifeline for supplies to the region’s 120,000 people. However, traffic has been mostly blocked since December by protesters believed to be backed by Azerbaijani authorities.