Six dead in Azerbaijan military shooting

Friday, January 29, 2010

BAKU - Agence France-Presse

Two soldiers in Azerbaijan shot and killed four fellow servicemen before killing themselves, the defense ministry said Friday, in the latest shooting rampage to shock the ex-Soviet republic.

Media linked the killing with what experts said is rampant brutality and corruption in Azerbaijan's military. The incident was the second mass shooting in Azerbaijan in less than a year, after a man shot dead 12 people at a university in the capital Baku last April before taking his life. "Two soldiers opened fire killing four servicemen and wounding two before killing themselves," defense ministry deputy spokesman Temur Abdullayev told AFP.

He said the incident occurred on Thursday evening but that no further details were immediately available. Azerbaijan's Trend news agency cast doubt on the ministry's version of events, quoting military sources as saying the two soldiers who carried out the shooting had been shot and killed while trying to flee the scene. It said a local division commander was among the dead victims.

The opposition Azadliq newspaper reported that the shooting took place in Azerbaijan's Dashkesan region on the border with Armenia. Azerbaijan is locked in a long-simmering conflict with Armenia over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region, which broke from Baku's control with Yerevan's support during a war in the early 1990s. Azadliq said a number of senior officers were among the victims and claimed that violence within the military was to blame for the shooting.

Experts and soldiers' rights groups have raised concerns about violence in the Azerbaijani military, saying a culture of corruption and brutal hazing prevails. In a 2008 report, the International Crisis Group said the Azerbaijani military was plagued by "endemic corruption, nepotism and hazing."

Azerbaijani military prosecutors in 2008 arrested two sergeants and reprimanded several senior officers after videos surfaced on the Internet of conscript soldiers being savagely beaten. Authorities have denied, however, that hazing is widespread in the military.