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Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan asked lawmakers to hold a minute's silence at a plenary parliament session on Wednesday to pay tribute to the victims of the 1 March 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan.

Ten Armenian citizens, including eight civilians and two police officers, were killed in street clashes.

MPs next moved to debate items on the agenda, including a new domestic violence bill calling for the introduction of electronic monitoring to better protect domestic abuse victims.

Addressing the parliament, Deputy Interior Minister Arpine Sargsyan said under the new measure 560 million drams would be allocated from the state budget to purchase a set of 200 electronic bracelets for domestic violence offenders.

Responding to opposition Hayastan faction MP Gegham Nazaryan, she said 1,547 domestic violence cases were recorded in Armenia last year. 619 were urgent cases and protection measures were applied in six cases.