A fire at a military base in Armenia early Thursday killed 15 soldiers after they used gasoline for heating, the Defense Ministry said.
The blaze quickly swept through a military barrack in the village of Azat, in Gegharkunik province, eastern Armenia.Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan said at a Cabinet meeting that the fire erupted because soldiers used gasoline to fuel a stove in violation of fire safety rules. He said that the unit’s commander and about a dozen other officers were also fired.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also fired Gen. Vagram Grigoryan, who was in charge of a group of forces in the region that includes the unit where the fire occurred.The Gegharkunik region borders Azerbaijan, which has been locked in a decades-long conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.
In six weeks of heavy fighting that began in September 2020, the Azerbaijani military routed Armenian forces and moved deep into Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing Armenia to accept a Russia-brokered peace deal in November that year. Another flare-up of fighting last September killed 155 soldiers from both sides.
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