Alwaght- Two people have been killed in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, following a bomb explosion inside a bus.
The explosion, which injured over seven people, occurred in downtown Yerevan at the intersection of Halabyan and Arzumanyan streets and could be heard from miles away.
Initially it was reported that three people have died and seven were injured.
Investigators are still looking into the cause of the explosion. The bus explosion occurred one day after the Armenian capital hosted ceremonies to mark the 101st anniversary of the Armenian genocide. The anniversary marks atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire against its Armenian Christian minority in 1915.
It is estimated that from 800,000 to 1.5 million Armenians were killed in what Armenians say was an ethnic cleansing for siding with the Russian Empire in WWI and allegedly rebelling against the government of the Ottoman Turks. While admitting that many Armenians were mistreated at the time, Turkey denies the accusations, saying that the number of killings has been exaggerated and that there had been no systematic killings of Armenians qualifying as genocide.
Armenia has hit the news headlines from early this month when hostilities were renewed in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. While the territory officially belongs to Azerbaijan, it broke away after several years of fighting and is controlled by ethnic Armenians who declared the territory an independent state.
In the first days of April, heavy clashes between Azeri Army and Nagorno-Karabakh forces left dozens dead on both sides. The situation threatened to lead to a full-blown war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russian leadership organized emergency negotiations with both countries and managed to broker a cessation of hostilities. Since then, the ceasefire has been largely upheld.
Early April the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised to back Azerbaijan as its conflict with Armenians over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh continues. “We pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes with the least casualties,” he said.
The intervention angered Armenia, which has historical enmity toward the Turkish president who has continually denied that the mass killing of Armenians by Turks during the Ottoman era was genocide, as claimed by Armenia.
