Armed men led by Nairi Hunanyan carried out a mass shooting at the Armenian parliament, killing Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan (pictured), National Assembly speaker Karen Demirchyan, and six others.

Nairi Hrachiki Hunanyan is an Armenian journalist who led the armed attack on the Armenian parliament on 27 October 1999 and killed Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan and Parliament Speaker Karen Demirchyan and six other politicians.

The 1999 Armenian parliament shooting, commonly known in Armenia as October 27, was a terrorist  attack on the Armenian National Assembly in the capital of Yerevan on 27 October 1999 by a group of five armed men led by Nairi Hunanyan that, among others, killed the two de facto decision-makers in the country's political leadership—Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan and Parliament Speaker Karen Demirchyan. Their reform-minded coalition had won a majority in a parliamentary election held in May of that year and had practically sidelined President Robert Kocharyan from the political scene.

The National Assembly of Armenia, also informally referred to as the Parliament of Armenia is the legislative branch of the government of Armenia.

Vazgen Zaveni Sargsyan was an Armenian military commander and politician. He was the first Defence Minister of Armenia from 1991 to 1992 and then from 1995 to 1999. He served as Armenia's Prime Minister from 11 June 1999 until his assassination on 27 October of that year. He rose to prominence during the mass movement for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia in the late 1980s and led Armenian volunteer groups during the early clashes with Azerbaijani forces. Appointed defence minister by President Levon Ter-Petrosyan soon after Armenia's independence from the Soviet Union in late 1991, Sargsyan became the most prominent commander of Armenian forces during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. In different positions, he regulated the military operations in the war area until 1994, when a ceasefire was reached ending the war with Armenian forces controlling almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts.