Politics

Three gunmen detained after attack on police station in Yerevan

Armenian national security forces detained three gunmen who had attacked a police station in the Nor-Nork district of the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

Armenia’s interior ministry said earlier that three armed men on Sunday tried to attack the police station. Two of the assailants had been wounded when hand grenades they were carrying detonated and were rushed to hospital.

No one was wounded in the operation to detain the third gunman, a spokesperson for the country’s interior ministry said.

According to local media, the gunmen might belong to the Combat Brotherhood organization, around 50 members of which had been detained earlier in the day, but the organization denied involvement.
The Combat Brotherhood is opposed to the transfer of several villages in Armenia’s Tavush Province to Azerbaijan as a part of the peace negotiation between Yerevan and Baku in the aftermath of the latter seizing control of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in September last year.

The region is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but hosted an Armenian majority, most of whom have now fled the area.

Azerbaijan has stated that the return of its lands is a necessary precondition for a peace deal to end the three-decades-long conflict. The sides agreed to negotiate peace back in December and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has repeatedly signaled in recent weeks that he is willing to return the villages to Azerbaijan, which are important for Yerevan as they control its main road northwards to the border with Georgia.

The local inhabitants, however, oppose the transfer of the villages to Azerbaijan, considering it an attempt and a land grab of Armenian territory.
Source: TASS via Reuters, PAP, TVP World
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