Epress.am News from Armenia
11:05 pm Nikol Pashinyan urged the protesters not to succumb to provocations and to refrain from clashing with the police. He claimed that the police wanted to incite violence in order to have reason to cordon off an even larger section of the street leading to the seized police building.
“Police want to remove protesters from the area to be able to carry out operations inside the building. Refraining from violence is the only guarantee of the safety of those inside. Whoever throws a stone towards the police cordon is a NSS agent or a provocateur. When I saw those guys inside, I understood that I would never forgive myself if anything happened to either [armed group leader] Pavlik Manukyan or [hostage, Yerevan deputy police chief] Valery Osipyan or other hostages. Armenia will not become a country where people are continuously slaughtered,” Pashinyan appealed to the protesters.
At the moment, tension between the two sides has somewhat eased, while some of the protesters are setting up barricades on an adjacent street.
10:30 pm Supporters of the “Daredevils of Sasun” armed group occupying Yerevan’s Erebuni police station clashed with riot police Wednesday evening after law enforcement officers refused to allow them to pass food to the gunmen. The crowd attempted to break through the police wall and started to throw stones and other items towards the officers to which law enforcement representatives responded by using special measures, including truncheons, stun grenades and tear gas. Several police officers and civilians were injured as a result, a number of protesters have been detained.
About half an hour later opposition lawmaker Nikol Pashniyan arrived on the scene to urge the protesters and the police to refrain from further violence. He insisted that the clash was “obviously a result of a provocation coming from NSS agents.”