Protests shut streets in Armenia’s capital, roads in other parts to demand the Prime Minister’s resignation

196 detained in Yerevan protests over border villages, sparking calls for PM's resignation and concerns over flooding.

Protesters demanding the resignation of Armenia's Prime Minister on Monday blocked main streets in the capital city and other parts of the country, sporadically clashing with police.

Police said 196 people have been detained in Yerevan. Protests have roiled the country for weeks, sparked by the government's return of four border villages to Azerbaijan.

The demonstrations are spearheaded by Bagrat Galstanyan, a high-ranking cleric in the Armenian Apostolic Church and archbishop of the Tavush diocese in Armenia’s northeast, where the returned villages are located.

Although the villages were the protests' rallying point, they have expanded to express a wide array of complaints against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his government.

Top figures in Mr. Galstanyan's Tavush for the Homeland movement told a huge rally in Yerevan on Sunday that they support Mr. Galstanyan becoming the next Prime Minister.

The decision to turn over the villages in Tavush followed a lightning military campaign in September, in which Azerbaijan’s military forced ethnic Armenian separatists in the Karabakh region to capitulate.

After Azerbaijan took full control of Karabakh, about 120,000 people fled the region, almost all from its ethnic Armenian population.