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Baku (AFP) Feb 21, 2011 An Azerbaijani soldier shot dead seven of his fellow young servicemen at a military base, in the latest deadly shooting tragedy to hit the ex-Soviet state's armed forces, officials said Monday. An investigation is now under way at the scene of Sunday's incident, said a joint statement from the defence ministry and the military prosecutor's office. The statement did not name the killer or give any reasons for the incident. "A joint operational investigation group is taking all necessary measures to clarify the reasons and circumstances surrounding the incident," the statement said. Azerbaijani news agencies reported that the shootings took place in a military unit stationed at Murovdag in the Goygol region in the west of the country, around 430 kilometres (270 miles) from the capital Baku. All the soldiers who were killed are reported to have been either 19 or 20 years old. The military in the former Soviet republic has suffered a series of similar incidents in recent years, which rights groups have blamed on a culture of brutality and corruption within the country's armed forces. In January 2010, two soldiers shot and killed four fellow servicemen before killing themselves. In June, an Azerbaijani soldier shot dead two fellow troops and wounded a third before killing himself. "Suicides and hazing in the Azerbaijani forces are also regularly reported," said a report published by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank last month. The authorities however have denied that violent hazing of young conscripts is widespread in the army. There have been a series of massive defence spending increases in recent years in Azerbaijan, an energy-rich state which has become a major supplier of oil and gas through pipelines to Europe. Azerbaijan has been building up its armed forces amid an increasingly tense military stand-off with neighbouring Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh, where ethnic Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized control from Baku in a war in the early 1990s. Officials have stated that the country now has a modernised, battle-ready army, and the Azerbaijani defence minister said earlier this month that his forces were "seriously preparing" for the possibility of renewed conflict with Armenia to win back Karabakh.
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