YEREVAN, OCTOBER 14, ARMENPRESS. 39 servicemen in the Armenian Armed Forces and the Artsakh Defense Army have died during the first 9 months of 2019, the General Prosecution said.

According to the report 50 servicemen had died in last year’s same period of time, which means that the deaths in the military have dropped 22%, moreover the decrease has been recorded in service-related cases.

The prosecution said 16 of the 39 deaths were service-related: 3 killings committed by the adversary, 4 killings, 5 suicide and inciting suicide, 1 service-related traffic accident, 1 disease, 2 accidents.

In 2018’s same period there were 27 service-related deaths, i.e. a 40% drop in the service-related deaths in the overall number has been recorded. 

The previous year’s 9 months picture was the following: 7 killings committed by the adversary (this year’s decrease by 4 or 57%), 1 killing (increase by 3), 8 suicide and inciting suicide cases (drop by 37,5%), 2 service-related traffic accident (drop by 1 or 50%), 3 disease-related (drop by 2 or 66,6%), 1 accident (increase by 1 or 50%), 1 landmine explosion (drop by 1 or 100%), 3 violation of rules of carrying firearms (drop by 3 or 100%), 1 violation of rules of military service (drop by 1 or 100%).

The prosecution said its comparative study shows that the decrease of the deaths is associated on one hand with the maintenance of trends of reducing the tensions in the Armenian-Azerbaijani line of contact, on the other hand improvement of “vertical relations” between the officers staff and the personnel in military divisions and “horizontal relations” between servicemen, maintenance of rules of military service and prevention of crimes.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan