Azerbaijani authorities said Thursday that prominent human rights activist Leyla Yunus, who has been charged with treason, was collaborating with the spy agencies of arch-enemy Armenia.

"It is established that in 2002 Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif Yunus... had trained the journalist Rauf Mirkadirov in espionage and has since organized several of his trips to Armenia," the Azeri prosecutor general's office said in a statement.

Prominent Azerbaijani human rights activist Leyla Yunus was charged Wednesday with treason, her lawyer Dzhavad Dzhavadov said.

The award-winning campaigner was also charged with tax evasion, large-scale fraud and falsifying documents.

Azerbaijani forces shot dead an Armenian soldier in frontline clashes in the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region on Saturday, the breakaway defense ministry said.

"A 20-year-old soldier, Khachatur Badasian, suffered a fatal gunshot wound" after Azerbaijani special forces "attempted an incursion to carry out sabotage and spying" in the early hours of Saturday, the ministry said.

Azerbaijani troops killed an Armenian farmer in the latest violent confrontation along the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region's volatile frontline, rebel authorities said on Tuesday.

"On July 14 (Monday), Azerbaijani troops shot dead a resident of Karabakh's Askeran district, Arvind Danielyan," the separatist region's prosecutor general said in a statement.

A court in Azerbaijan on Monday sentenced a prominent rights activist to six years in jail for hooliganism and possession of a knife, his lawyer said, denouncing the charges as bogus.

Elchin Sadygov told Agence France Presse that his client Hasan Huseynli had been "jailed for six years on bogus charges of hooliganism and possessing cold arms" by a court in the second city of Ganca.

An ethnic Armenian separatist officer in Nagorny Karabakh and an Azerbaijani soldier died in the latest raid along the disputed region's volatile frontline, the rebel defense ministry said Saturday.

Several other Azerbaijani soldiers were captured in the fighting, breakaway Armenian forces said, although Baku has made no comment on the claims.

Azerbaijani troops have shot dead a soldier from the separatist Nagorny Karabakh forces in the latest outbreak of violence along the disputed region's volatile frontline, the rebel defense ministry said on Wednesday.  

"Private Armen Avetisian, 19, was shot dead by Azerbaijani troops on June 24 at the southern sector of the line of separation between Karabakh and Azerbaijani armed forces," the self-proclaimed state's defence ministry said in a statement.

Azerbaijani forces killed an Armenian soldier in a fresh border shoot-out between the arch-foes locked in a smoldering conflict over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region, the defense ministry in Yerevan said Friday.

"Private Grisha Khachatrian, 20, died Thursday of mortal wounds" when Azerbaijani troops opened fire on the south-western sector of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, the ministry said in a statement.

Two Armenian troops died on Thursday in a fresh clash with Azerbaijani forces on the volatile border between the two countries, Armenia's defense ministry said.

"Sergeant Andranik Egoyan, 26, and private Boris Gasparyan, 22, were mortally wounded by the Azerbaijani forces on the south-western sector of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border," the ministry said in a statement.

Swiss President Didier Burkhalter on Wednesday called on arch-foes Azerbaijan and Armenia to revitalize stalled negotiations on resolving their decades-long conflict over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.

"The status quo is not really an option. We have to move to peace step by step," Burkhalter -- who is also chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) -- told a news conference in Yerevan.