Armenian and Azerbaijani forces accused one another of attacks on their territory on Tuesday, as fighting over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh continued for a 3rd straight day following the resumption of violence within the decades-old conflict.
The renewed fighting prompted calls from round the world for a ceasefire, before hostilities escalate.
Azerbaijan's Defence Ministry said Armenian forces shelled the Dashkesan region in Azerbaijan. Armenian officials said Azerbaijani forces opened fire on a military force within the Armenian town of Vardenis, setting a bus ablaze and killing one civilian.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry denied shelling the Dashkesan region and said the reports were laying the groundwork for Azerbaijan “expanding the geography of hostilities, including the aggression against the Republic of Armenia.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
Dozens were killed and wounded since fighting broke out on Sunday. The Nagorno-Karabakh Defence Ministry reported 84 servicemen killed. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said on Tuesday that 10 civilians were killed on its side, but he didn't detail the country's military casualties.
Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian government since 1994 at the top of a separatist war following the breakup of the Soviet Union three years earlier.
The region within the Caucasus of about 4,400 square kilometres, or about the dimensions of the US state of Delaware, is 50km (30 miles) from the Armenian border. Soldiers backed by Armenia also occupy some Azerbaijani territory outside the region.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed for “an immediate ceasefire and a return to the negotiating table” in phone calls with the leaders of both countries, her office said.
She told them the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe offers an appropriate forum for talks which the 2 countries’ neighbours “should contribute to the peaceful solution”, said her spokesman, Steffen Seibert.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a visit to Greece that “both sides must stop the violence” and work “to return to substantive negotiations as quickly as possible”.
Turkey supports Azerbaijan within the conflict, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging Armenia to withdraw immediately from the separatist region.
Turkish secretary of state Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey is “by Azerbaijan’s side on the sector and at the [negotiating] table”.
Cavusoglu said the international community must defend Azerbaijan's territorial integrity within the same way it defended the integrity of Ukraine and Georgia.
“They are holding Azerbaijan, whose territories are occupied, on an equal footing with Armenia. this is often a wrong and unjust approach,” Cavusoglu said after a visit to Azerbaijan’s Embassy in Ankara.
Russia, which along side France and therefore the us co-chairs the Minsk group found out in 1992 to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, urged every country to assist facilitate a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
“We turn all countries, especially our partners like Turkey, to try to to everything to convince the opposing parties to cease fire and return to peacefully resolving the conflict by politico-diplomatic means,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
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