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Dozens dead as Armenia-Azerbaijan clashes continue More casualties as Armenian and Azerbaijani forces clash for second day
(about 3 hours later)
Dispute over breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh prompted Armenia and Karabakh to declare martial law Both sides accuse each other of using heavy military in dispute over breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh
At least 24 people have died in clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as the latest violence in the decades-long territorial dispute sparked international calls to halt the fighting. Fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over a disputed region entered a second day on Monday, with reports of 15 more soldiers killed and both sides accusing each other of using heavy artillery.
Fighting that broke out on the weekend over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh continued on Monday morning, according to Reuters, with the deployment of heavy artillery on both sides. Hundreds more are said to have been wounded in the fiercest clashes since 2016 in the South Caucasus, a region that provides crucial transit routes for gas and oil to the international market.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory but broke away in 1991 and is run by ethnic Armenians. Tensions between the countries have been growing for months over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an enclave legally considered to be part of Azerbaijan but which has been run by ethnic Armenians since it declared independence in 1991.
The Armenian defence ministry reported fighting throughout Sunday night, while Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said Armenian forces were shelling the town of Terter. The Armenian defence ministry reported fighting throughout the night on Sunday, while Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said Armenian forces were shelling the town of Terter.
The worst skirmishes since 2016 have raised the spectre of a fresh war between the ex-Soviet rivals, locked since the early 1990s in a stalemate over the Armenia-backed breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s president declared a partial military mobilisation. Interfax news agency quoted an Armenian defence ministry representative as saying 200 Armenians had been wounded.
Seventeen Armenian separatist fighters were killed and more than 100 wounded in the fighting, the Karabakh president, Arayik Harutyunyan said on Sunday, conceding that his forces had “lost positions”. Both sides also reported civilian casualties. At least 16 troops and civilians were killed in the worst fighting on Sunday, after Armenia declared martial law and ordered the total mobilisation of its military.
Karabakh separatists said one Armenian woman and a child were killed, while Baku said that an Azerbaijani family of five died in shelling launched by Armenian separatists. It accused Azerbaijan of carrying out air and artillery attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh, though Baku said it had counterattacked in response to Armenian shelling.
Azerbaijan claimed it captured a strategic mountain in Karabakh that helps control transport links between Yerevan and the enclave that is landlocked inside Azerbaijan. The clashes prompted a flurry of diplomacy to prevent a flare-up of a decades-old conflict between majority Christian Armenia and mainly Muslim Azerbaijan, with Russia calling for an immediate ceasefire and another regional power, Turkey, saying it would support Azerbaijan.
Armenia’s defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan in turn said Karabakh rebel forces killed “some 200 Azerbaijani troops and destroyed 30 enemy artillery units and 20 drones”. Pipelines shipping Caspian oil and natural gas from Azerbaijan to the world pass close to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Fighting between Muslim Azerbaijan and majority-Christian Armenia threatened to embroil regional players Russia and Turkey, with the Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, calling on global powers to prevent Ankara’s involvement. Human right activists in Armenia said two civilians – a woman and a child – had been killed by Azerbaijani shelling. Armenian military officials have reported at least 10 casualties on their side.
“We are on the brink of a full-scale war in the South Caucasus,” Pashinyan said. Officials in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, said an unspecified number of their civilians had been killed and six wounded, and Nagorno-Karabakh said 16 of its military staff had been killed. The reports could not be independently confirmed.
France, Germany, Italy and the European Union swiftly urged an “immediate ceasefire” while Pope Francis prayed for peace. Azerbaijan’s army said it had taken control of several villages in Nagorno-Karabakh as of Sunday afternoon, a claim that Armenia rejected.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, expressed his “deep concern” and “strongly called for an immediate end to hostilities”. The long-running dispute in the South Caucasus attracts regional and western concern because the area is a corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to global markets.
The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said he was “extremely concerned” and urged the sides to stop fighting and return to talks. Turkey has strong cultural and economic ties with Azerbaijan and has threatened to stand with it in any conflict. Russia, another regional power, is traditionally close to Armenia but has been forging links with Azerbaijan’s elites in past years.
The US State Department said it had contacted the two countries and called on them to “use the existing direct communication links between them to avoid further escalation”. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said in a statement posted on Twitter that Armenia had “once again showed that it is the biggest threat to peace and tranquility in the region” and that Turkey stood by Azerbaijan “with all its means, as always”.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, discussed the military flareup with Pashinyan and called for “an end to hostilities”. Armenia’s defence ministry on Sunday said its troops had destroyed three tanks and shot down two helicopters and three unmanned aerial vehicles in response to an attack on civilian targets including Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert.
But Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey blamed Yerevan for the flare-up and promised Baku its “full support”. “Our response will be proportionate, and the military-political leadership of Azerbaijan bears full responsibility for the situation,” the ministry said in a statement echoed by the foreign ministry.
“The Turkish people will support our Azerbaijani brothers with all our means as always,” wrote the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, wrote on Twitter: “We stay strong next to our army to protect our motherland from Azeri invasion.”
Karabakh’s President Harutyunyan said Turkey was providing mercenaries and warplanes to the fight, suggesting, “the war has already … [gone] beyond the limits of a Karabakh-Azerbaijan conflict”. Azerbaijan denied the Armenian defence ministry statement, saying it had “complete advantage over the enemy on the front”, and accused Armenian forces of launching “deliberate and targeted” attacks along the frontline.
Azerbaijan accused Armenian forces of violating a ceasefire, saying it had launched a counter-offensive to “ensure the safety of the population” using tanks, artillery missiles, combat aviation and drones. “We defend our territory, our cause is right,” Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, said in an address to the nation.
In a televised address to the nation earlier on Sunday, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan vowed victory over Armenian forces. The two former Soviet Republics have clashed for years over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly ethnic Armenian territory that is officially part of Azerbaijan but which broke away from the country as the Soviet Union was dissolving.
“Our cause is just and we will win,” he said, echoing a famous quote from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin at the outbreak of the second world war in Russia. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-year war over the region until a ceasefire in 1994, and since then Nagorno-Karabakh has governed itself as the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh.
“Karabakh is Azerbaijan.” Both countries have continued to accuse each other of violating the ceasefire in the enclave and elsewhere along their border in the years since, including throughout 2020. More than a dozen soldiers and civilians have been killed in fighting in recent months.
Both Armenia and Karabakh declared martial law and military mobilisation. Azerbaijan imposed military rule and a curfew in large cities. At least 200 people were killed in a revival of the conflict in April 2016.
Armenia said that Azerbaijan attacked civilian settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh including the main city, Stepanakert. Reuters contributed to this report
Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said there were reports of dead and wounded. “Extensive damage has been inflicted on many homes and civilian infrastructure,” it said.
Ethnic Armenian separatists seized the Nagorny Karabakh region from Baku in a 1990s war that claimed 30,000 lives.
Talks to resolve one of the worst conflicts to emerge from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union have been largely stalled since a 1994 ceasefire agreement.
France, Russia and the United States have mediated peace efforts as the “Minsk group” but the last big push for a peace deal collapsed in 2010.