A general brawl broke out on Thursday in the National Assembly of Armenia between lawmakers from the ruling Civil Contract party and those from the opposition Strong Armenia faction.

A brawl between deputies of the ruling Civil Contract party and those of the opposition Strong Armenia faction broke out on Thursday during a session of Armenia’s National Assembly. The conflict began after an intervention by deputy Taron Čahojan, whose statements prompted a reaction from opposition leader Narek Karapetian.

The exchange of words escalated into a physical altercation, and the session was interrupted after the parliamentarians began hitting each other. Security officers were called into the chamber, but the conflict reportedly continued in the foyer.

Parliament Speaker Ruben Rubinyan accused Karapetian of triggering the incident and claimed that the first attack on Čahojan was carried out by opposition deputy Garnik Davtyan. He rejected criticism over the delay in calling a recess and announced that any assaults committed by parliamentary assistants would be sanctioned.

Karapetian described the altercation as a normal phenomenon of parliamentarianism and mocked representatives of the government. Secretary of the Security Council Alain Simonyan stated that the authorities were not interested in such scenes and rejected the idea of an escalation of political tensions.