11 January 2020, 11:36
Armenian GPO counts 49 military servicemen who perished in 2019
In 2019, 20 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Armenia and the Defence Army of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) perished during performing their service; 29 other deaths were not related to the performance of service duties. Compared to 2018, the military death toll decreased by 22% the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) of Armenia has reported.
A tension reduction in the Karabakh conflict zone has led to fewer combat losses in 2019 than in 2018, Samvel Agababyan, a military observer, has noted. However, the non-combat losses went up; and this was the result of commanders' impunity and poor operation of technical and medical services of the Armenian Ministry of Defence (MoD), Arthur Sakunts and Zhanna Aleksanyan, human rights defenders, have stated.
In 2019, 49 servicemen of Armenia and NKR perished, while in 2018 the number of such deaths was 63, Gor Abramyan, an Advisor to the Public Prosecutor General of Armenia, reported in his Facebook.
Earlier, rights defenders stated that in order to stop soldiers' suicides in Armenia, it is necessary to force officers to be responsible for hazing and wrong attitudes, increase the number of women in the army and create an independent monitoring group.
This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on January 11, 2020 at 08:00 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.
Author: Tigran Petrosyan Source: CK correspondent
