Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday announced a new attempt to establish a cease-fire in their conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh starting from midnight, a move that comes a week after a Russia-brokered truce frayed immediately after it took force.
The new agreement was announced following Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s calls with his counterparts from the two nations, in which he strongly urged them to abide by the Moscow deal. There were no immediate claims of violations after the truce took effect at midnight.
Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. The latest fighting that began on Sept. 27 has involved heavy artillery, rockets and drones, killing hundreds in the largest escalation of hostilities between the South Caucasus neighbors in more than a quarter-century.
Russia, which has a security pact with Armenia but has cultivated warm ties with Azerbaijan, hosted top diplomats from both countries for more than 10 hours of talks that ended with the initial cease-fire agreement. But the deal frayed immediately after the truce took effect last Saturday, with both sides blaming each other for breaching it.
The full-scale fighting continued to rage through the week.
On Saturday, the Armenia-backed Republic of Artsakh released a statement through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs accusing Azerbaijani-Turkish forces of missile strikes targeting the capital, Stepanakert, and the city of Shushi among other communities from Friday through Saturday.
Artsakh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the missile strikes show Azerbaijani-Turkish forces’ intentions to escalate the violence and bloodshed. The agency said Azerbaijan continues to break the Russia-led truce and ignore calls to stop the wounding and killing of civilians.
On Saturday, Azerbaijan accused Armenia of striking its second-largest city with a ballistic missile that killed at least 13 civilians and wounded 50 others. Human rights officials in Artsakh have said Azerbaijan is to blame for the deaths of at least 36 civilians and more than 100 people wounded.
A total of 130 peaceful settlements in Artsakh have been severely damaged, the officials said.
The Armenian Defense Ministry denied launching the strike, but the separatist authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh put out a statement listing alleged “legitimate” military facilities in the city of Ganja, although they stopped short of claiming responsibility for the attack.
Azerbaijani officials said the Soviet-made Scud missile destroyed or damaged about 20 residential buildings in Ganja overnight, and emergency workers spent hours searching in the rubble for victims and survivors.
Scud missiles date back to the 1960s and carry a big load of explosives but are known for their lack of precision.
In a televised address to the nation, Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, denounced the missile strike as a war crime and warned the leadership of Armenia that it would face responsibility.
“Azerbaijan will give its response and it will do so exclusively on the battlefield,” Aliyev said.
Separatist authorities in Artsakh have repeatedly accused Azerbaijan of human rights violations and war crimes against the region’s mostly ethnic Armenian population.
While authorities in Azerbaijan and Armenia have denied targeting civilians, residential areas have increasingly come under shelling amid the hostilities.
Stepanakert, the regional capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, came under intense shelling overnight, leaving three civilians wounded, according to Armenia-backed separatist authorities.
Aliyev announced that Azerbaijani forces have taken the town of Fizuli and seven villages around it, gaining a “strategic edge.” Fizuli is one of the seven Azerbaijani regions outside Nagorno-Karabakh that was seized by the Armenian forces during the war in the early 1990s.
Azerbaijani authorities said 60 civilians have been killed and 270 have been wounded since Sept. 27, but they haven’t revealed military losses. Separatist authorities said over 600 Nagorno-Karabakh soldiers and 36 civilians have been killed.
Azerbaijan has insisted it has the right to reclaim its land by force after efforts by the so-called Minsk group of international mediators that comprises Russia, the United States and France failed to yield any progress after nearly three decades. Azerbaijan has actively pushed for its ally Turkey to take a prominent role in future peace talks.
In a statement Saturday, Artsakh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said international intervention efforts have not worked so far, making it “necessary that the international community moves from words to action using all the available toolkit to stop the aggression against the people of Artsakh.”
“We once again emphasize that the international recognition of the independence of the Republic of Artsakh is the most effective non-military way for the restoration of regional peace,” officials said.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar spoke on the phone with his Azerbaijani counterpart, congratulating Azerbaijan on “liberating Fizuli from the occupation” and downing Armenian jets.
The Azerbaijani military declared Saturday that they downed an Armenian Su-25 jet, a claim quickly dismissed by Armenia’s Defense Ministry.
The Armenian military said they downed three Azerbaijani drones over the territory of Armenia on Saturday. Azerbaijan denied that.
Drones and rocket systems supplied by Turkey have given the Azerbaijani military an edge on the battlefield, helping them outgun the Armenian forces that rely mostly on outdated Soviet-era weapons.