Former Chief of General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Norat Ter-Grigoryants described the tragedy in the shelter of an engineer company of the Armenian Defense Ministry's military unit in Gegharkunik province as an emergency accident which, according to him, happened because of the uselessness, disorganization, negligence, and disorderliness of the services responsible for fire safety.

In an interview with NEWS.am, he recalled that every barracks must have a fire safety instruction, fire extinguishing equipment, an automatic fire extinguishing system, and a person in charge, a person on duty, and a person to leave the building when an alarm sounds.

"This tragedy shows that all this was not there, there was no training.  We can assume there were blocked doors, there was no emergency exit, there was no fire extinguisher. Most likely, people were driven into a dead end and couldn't get out in time.  

The leadership of the military unit, the chief of rear is responsible for all this. They are liable to prosecution. This has to be stopped. No transgression in the army should go unpunished, all the more a crime. This tragedy is the result of wrong management, wrong tasks, laziness, arrogance and uncontrolled command," Ter-Grigoryants said.    

At the end of the talk the general once again expressed his deepest condolences to the families and relatives of the killed servicemen.

On January 19 at about 01:30 a.m. a fire broke out in the shelter of engineer-sapper company N of the military unit of Armenian Ministry of Defense located in the territory of Azat village of Gegharkunik province. According to preliminary information, 15 servicemen died as a result of the fire. A criminal case has been instigated; the commander of the second army corps and other officials have been dismissed.

Aram Danielyan