YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Opposition lawmakers demanded Defense Minister Suren Papikyan’s resignation on Tuesday during a session of Armenia’s parliament marred by altercations between them and their pro-government colleagues. The lawmakers representing the Strong Armenia and Hayastan alliances held Papikyan responsible for the fact that an Azerbaijani soldier shot and seriously wounded an Armenian woman after crossing into the country’s southeastern Syunik province last week. They demanded a parliamentary inquiry into the incident as well as noncombat deaths of Armenian soldiers reported this year. “It needs to be determined whether the defense minister is fake or not,” said Strong Armenia’s Tigran Abrahamian. Parliament speaker Ruben Rubinyan responded by attacking the opposition bloc’s top leader, Samvel Karapetian. Rubinyan was in turn lambasted by another Strong Armenia deputy, Edgard Ghazaryan, and switched off his microphone before a shouting match and a scuffle broke out between other lawmakers representing the two rival camps. The session was interrupted as a result. It resumed shortly afterward, with Taron Chakoyan, a former deputy chief of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s staff, attacking Catholicos Karekin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church at odds with Pashinyan. Strong Armenia deputies protested vehemently, banging their fists on their desks. Tensions on the parliament floor flared up again after one of them was accused of shouting an insult at Chakoyan and other members of the ruling Civil Contract party’s parliamentary caucus. He denied doing that. Rubinyan had to again interrupt the proceedings. He urged fellow deputies to stop insulting each other and said he will not allow further physical clashes between them. Opposition deputies, notably Ghazaryan, said that the pro-government speaker himself provokes such incidents by commenting scathingly on their speeches and simply blocking them. For his part, Rubinian threatened to “throw out” Ghazaryan from the chamber. Meanwhile, the opposition insisted on Papikyan’s resignation, again decrying the fact that the Azerbaijani soldier managed to advance deep into Armenian territory and was captured only after being reportedly stabbed by the Syunik woman seriously wounded by him inside her house. Armenia’s National Security Service says Azerbaijani authorities notified it about the soldier’s disappearance two days before the incident. Narek Karapetyan, Strong Armenia’s parliamentary leader, claimed that the Armenian defense minister was busy campaigning for an upcoming local election in his hometown, Stepanavan, instead of rushing to the border area. A Civil Contract deputy denied the claim. Leaders of the parliament’s pro-government majority rejected opposition demands for the formation of an ad-hoc commission tasked with investigating the border intrusion as well as soldier deaths attributed to suicides. They argued that law-enforcement authorities are already conducting such inquiries. Pashinian on Monday sacked a deputy head of the NSS overseeing Armenian border guards. The post Tense Parliament Session Leads to Brawl between Lawmakers appeared first on Asbarez.com .