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Azerbaijan is trying to provoke a military escalation along the line of contact in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Thursday.

"We can see Azerbaijan taking specific measures aimed at a military escalation on the Nagorno-Karabakh contact line," he told a cabinet meeting.

Pashinyan recalled that three Artsakh police officers were killed and another was wounded after an Azerbaijani subversive group ambushed their vehicle near Stepanakert earlier in March.

“The latest incident occurred in the Russian peacekeepers’ zone of responsibility in Nagorno-Karabakh. It’s worth noting that the Russian Defense Ministry held Azerbaijan responsible for the incident in its March 6 statement. According to the statement, representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan are also involved in the process of clarifying the circumstances of the incident," he said.

The premier highlighted the incident took place within the Lachin corridor, which is a five-kilometer wide strip of land controlled by Russian peacekeepers.

“Under Clause 6 of the November 9, 2020 trilateral statement, the Lachin corridor is not only a road blocked by Azerbaijan since12 December 2022, but also a 5-kilometer-wide area. Therefore, the murders committed by Azerbaijan on March 5 constitute a triple violation of the trilateral statement,” he noted.

"Azerbaijan's propaganda machine has long been creating an information background for a large-scale attack on Nagorno-Karabakh and escalation trends are already visible on the ground," Pashinyan said, accusing the Azerbaijani leadership of preparing an ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh.