The fatal clash occurred at around 16.30 local time (11.30 GMT), the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry reported.

Azerbaijani soldiers resisted the Armenian attack. Three Armenian servicemen were killed and several others wounded in the close fighting, the ministry said.

The Azerbaijani Defence Ministry named the dead Azerbaijani soldiers as Vugar Amirov and Parvin Abdullayev, both born in 1991.

Correspondents for ANS and 1news.az, reported earlier that several clashes occurred during the day yesterday on the contact line separating Armenian and Azerbaijani forces near Chayli.

The first clash occurred early in the morning, from 05.30 to 07.00 local time (00.30 to 02.00 GMT) and a second in the early evening from 16.30 to 18.00 (11.30 to 13.00 GMT) local time. Soldiers from the two sides clashed again in the hours of darkness from 21.00 until midnight (16.00 to 19.00 GMT).

An officer from an unnamed Azerbaijani military unit said that Armenian forces had been repulsed after they tried to break through the front line from positions in the occupied village of Talish.

Armenia Today quoted the Nagorno-Karabakh defence ministry as saying that Azerbaijani forces had tried to encroach upon Armenian positions around dawn and had been repulsed. An Armenian soldier was wounded in the early morning clash, the Karabakh side said.

Elsewhere along the contact line, Armenian forces in the village of Berkaber in Ijevan District opened fire on Azerbaijani positions in Gizil Hajili in Gazakh District from 18.50 to 19.00 (13.50 to 14.00) yesterday, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry said.

The village of Chayli was the scene of a clash on 18 June in which at least five servicemen, four Armenian and one Azerbaijani, were killed. The body of Azerbaijani warrant officer Mubariz Ibrahimov has not yet been returned by the Armenian side.

Emil Guliyev
News.Az