ArmeniaNow Another Armenian soldier has been killed in the Karabakh conflict zone amid heightened tensions along the line of contact dividing troops of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The news that 19-year-old conscript Artur Aghababyan was killed on the evening of March 10 by an enemy shot came as Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan voiced cautious optimism about possible progress in the negotiations with Azerbaijan over the future of Karabakh following a fresh round of talks hosted by Russia last weekend.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s Defense Army, meanwhile, issued a strong statement condemning Azerbaijan’s repeated ceasefire violations, against the same accusations from the Azeri side.

This is the second Armenian soldier killed within a space of several days. The other, Grigor Shakhkyan, was killed by enemy fire on the eve of the March 5 Sochi talks in which Sargsyan and his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev were hosted by Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev.

The situation along the Karabakh line of contact has led the OSCE Minsk Group cochairmen, who are in charge of advancing international efforts on brokering peace in Karabakh, to call for an inquiry of the skirmishes.

“Such senseless acts, if confirmed, would contravene the commitment of the parties to refrain from the use of force and to seek a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” the U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-chairing the Group said in a statement on March 9.

Earlier, Baku claimed a nine year old boy was shot dead by an Armenian sniper, a claim vehemently denied by the military authorities in both Karabakh and Armenia.

The Minsk Group said it had asked Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson in Office, “to carry out an immediate investigation with the participation of all sides, as agreed in the March 5 joint statement issued in Sochi by Presidents Medvedev, Aliyev, and Sargsyan.”

The Armenian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Thursday hailing this initiative.

The Minsk Group troika also said they will travel to the region next week “to call upon the parties to cooperate fully with the investigation.”