Armenia and Azerbaijan announced on Tuesday they had started border demarcation work as part of normalization efforts between the arch foes, who had been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict.
Last month, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to Baku's demand to return four border villages which had been seized by Yerevan's forces in the 1990s.
The two countries reconfirmed last week they would advance the border delimitation in the area based on Soviet-era maps.
The decision sparked protests among the residents of nearby Armenian villages.
Locals fear they could end up isolated from the rest of the country and some houses could fall into territory controlled by Azerbaijan.
The territories are of strategic importance for landlocked Armenia as they control parts of the highway to Georgia -- vital for the country's foreign trade -- as well as a Russian gas pipeline, and are advantageous military positions.
On Tuesday, the two countries' interior ministries announced the beginning of delimitation work on the ground.
Azerbaijan said expert groups were conducting "clarification of coordinates based on geodesic study of the terrain".
Yerevan, meanwhile, ruled out "the transfer of any parts of Armenia's sovereign territory" to Azerbaijan as a result of the delimitation.
Fresh rallies erupted in Armenia following the announcement.
Dozens of protesters blocked the crucial Armenia-Georgia highway at several points, including near Lake Sevan and the town of Novemberyan, close to the border with Azerbaijan, Armenian media reported.
Pashinyan has insisted on the need to resolve the remaining border disputes "to avoid a new war".
He said Russian border guards -- deployed in the area since 1992 -- would be replaced by Armenian servicemen.
Last autumn, Azerbaijani troops recaptured the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian separatists in a lightning offensive.
That effectively ended a bloody three-decade standoff between the Caucasus neighbours over control of the mountainous region.
While both Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev say a wider peace agreement is within their reach, lingering territorial disputes pose a constant threat of a fresh flareup.
© Agence France-Presse
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