An Armenian soldier was killed Tuesday in a border shootout with Azerbaijani forces, Armenia's defence ministry said, with tensions still high after last September's war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh district. It said that the situation was now "calm" after the skirmish at the Verin Shorzha border point in Armenia's Gegharkunik district. The area borders the Kalbajar region that was retaken by Azerbaijan in the war. "One serviceman has been killed as a result of a shootout that followed the opening of fire by Azerbaijani troops" at a border position in eastern Armenia, the ministry said in a statement. A long-simmering conflict over Karabakh -- a breakaway Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan -- erupted into full-blown war in late September, with some 6,000 people killed in six weeks of fighting. It ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire that saw Armenia cede to Azerbaijan swathes of territory it had controlled for decades. The ceasefire, monitored by Russian peacekeepers, has largely held but tensions have continued and there have been several border incidents. Earlier this month Armenia accused Azerbaijan's military of crossing the southern border in an "infiltration" to "lay siege" to a lake that is shared by the two countries. Baku rejected the claims, but Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said up to 600 Azerbaijani troops remained on Armenian territory. The United States and France have called on Azerbaijan to pull back its forces. Pashinyan told a May 20 parliament session that Russia was helping Armenia and Azerbaijan hammer out an agreement to resolve any border incidents through "diplomatic means, not through the movement of troops". Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said the same day that the time had come for the two arch-enemies to start working on a peace agreement. mkh-im/mm/ach