Armenia and Azerbaijan on Tuesday reported large-scale border clashes that have left Azerbaijani troops dead in the latest flare-up between the sworn enemies.

Since the end of the 2020 war between Yerevan and Baku over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, there have been frequent reports of gunfights along their shared border.

“On Tuesday at 00:05 (2005 GMT) Azerbaijan launched an intensive shelling with artillery and large-caliber firearms against Armenian military positions in the direction of the cities of Goris, Sotk and Jermuk,” the Armenian Defense Ministry said.

A statement said Azerbaijan had also used drones.

However, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry accused Armenia of “large-scale subversive acts” near Dashkesan, Kelbayar and Lachin districts on the border, adding that its army positions “came under fire, including from trench mortars”.

“There are casualties among (Azerbaijani) soldiers,” it said, without giving any figures.

The United States called for an end to the conflict on Monday night, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying the US is “deeply concerned” by the situation, including “reported attacks on settlements and civilian infrastructure” in Armenia.

“As we have long made clear, there can be no military solution to the conflict,” Blinken said in a statement. “We demand an immediate end to all military hostilities.”

Last week, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing one of its soldiers in a border shootout.

In August, Azerbaijan said it had lost a soldier and the Karabakh army said two of its troops were killed and more than a dozen injured.

The neighbors fought two wars — in the 1990s and 2020 — over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan.

Six weeks of fighting in the fall of 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire.

Under the deal, Armenia ceded parts of territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow dispatched about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.

At EU-brokered talks in Brussels in May and April, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to “push talks forward” on a future peace deal.

Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.