A tentative cease-fire appeared to take hold Tuesday in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, as ethnic Armenian separatists largely stopped exchanging fire with Azeri government forces following the area’s worst violence in decades.

“There is zero fire from both sides” said Artak Beglaryan, the spokesman for the separatist republic’s prime minister, despite the absence of a formal truce. “At this moment, there is no written agreement.”

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