Azerbaijan says three of its troops died overnight in Nagorno-Karabakh region as Russia and the west call for a ceasefire

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Deadly clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh region have continued for a third day, despite international pressure to halt the worst fighting in decades over the disputed territory.

Azerbaijan said three of its troops were killed overnight when Armenian forces shelled its positions using mortars and grenade launchers, taking the overall death toll in the latest surge of violence to at least 36.

The fresh outbreak of fighting over the region – held by Armenian-backed separatists since a war ended with an inconclusive truce in 1994 – erupted on Friday night with both sides accusing the other of attacking with heavy weaponry.

Although Nagorno-Karabakh is a small territory – it is home to about 150,000 people – it has long been a flashpoint for power rivalry and ethnic and religious tensions.

Following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia towards the end of the first world war, Moscow’s new rulers established the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region, with an ethnic Armenian majority, within the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan.



When the Soviet empire began to implode in the late 1980s, the mostly Christian Armenians fought to break the grip of the mostly Muslim Turkic Azeris. Up to 30,000 people are thought to have died before the 1994 truce.

“In the event of continued Armenian provocations, we will launch a full-scale operation along the entire frontline, using all kinds of weapons,” Azerbaijan’s defence ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly told journalists on Monday. He said the separatists had fired on Azeri positions and frontline villages with large-calibre mortar and grenade launchers.



The Armenian-backed separatist authorities in Karabakh – internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan – also said fighting was continuing and that Azeri troops had “intensified shelling of the Karabakh army positions on Monday morning, using 152mm mortars, rocket-propelled artillery and tanks”.

Russia and the west have called for a ceasefire, with Vladimir Putin, a key power broker, pushing for an immediate end to the fighting, and Moscow’s diplomats and military pressuring both sides. “We are continuing contacts with Baku and Yerevan so that they hear the signals from Moscow, Washington and Paris,” the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said.

France, a co-president of the Minsk Group of negotiators in the conflict, said the group would meet on Tuesday in Vienna to discuss the violence.

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Sporadic clashes happen regularly along the frontline but the latest outbreak represents a serious escalation and analysts warned it could quickly spiral.



“The Karabakh conflict has serious geopolitical implications,” Sergi Kapanadze, the professor of international relations at the Tbilisi State University in Georgia, told AFP, and “threatens the stability of the strategic Caucasus region which is a transit route of Caspian oil and gas to European markets that bypasses Russia.”

Russia and Turkey – the major regional powers which are at loggerheads following Ankara’s downing of a Russian war plane over the Syrian border in November – have found themselves on opposing sides of the conflict.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has vowed to back traditional ally Azerbaijan – a secular Muslim Turkic nation – “to the end”. “We pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes with the least casualties,” he said on Sunday. Russia maintains a military base and ties with Armenia.

Iran on Monday urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to show restraint and offered its help to halt the fighting.



Both sides claimed to have made territorial gains since the fighting flared. Artsrun Hovhannisyan, the spokesman for the Armenian defence ministry, said Karabakh forces had advanced overnight, “liberating new positions”. Azerbaijan claimed to have snatched several strategic positions inside the territory.



Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

