YEREVAN — Fresh clashes have broken out on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, it's been claimed.

Armenia's defense ministry claimed Azerbaijani forces had started "intensive bombardment" of its positions shortly after midnight towards several towns such as Goris and Sotk.

Baku accused Armenia of "large-scale subversive acts" overnight, adding Armenian fire had caused casualties in its ranks.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held separate talks overnight with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and US diplomatic chief Antony Blinken.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, two rival ex-Soviet republics in the Caucasus, have clashed in two wars over the past three decades for control of the Nagorny Karabakh region, the last of which was in 2020.

Six weeks of fighting in the autumn of 2020 left more than 6,500 people dead and resulted in a ceasefire brokered by Russia.

As part of the deal, Armenia ceded parts of the territory it had controlled for decades and Moscow deployed some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.

Frequent shootings have been reported along their common border since the 2020 war.

Last week, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing one of its soldiers in border clashes. In August, Baku said it had lost a soldier and the Nagorno-Karabakh army reported that two of its soldiers had been killed and more than a dozen wounded.

There was another bloody war in the early 1990s. Thousands were killed on both sides. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. That war ended with a truce in 1994, although there has been sporadic violence since as the dispute remains unresolved. — Euronews