Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said on Tuesday the Karabakh militia continued to shell its positions Monday night.
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At the same time, the Azerbaijan Defense Ministry has released footage of its military counterattack on an Armenian troops’ command post.
“In accordance with UN Security Council resolutions, Armenia must free all occupied territories, and provide complete territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Azerbaijan, recognized on worldwide level”, head of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s press-service Khikmet Gadzhiev said on Monday, as quoted by RIA Novosti.
Armenia, which backs the separatists, earlier warned that the fighting could spark a large-scale war in the region.
The Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is surrounded by Azerbaijan on all sides, has been a source of prevailing tension between the two nations since 1988, when the Soviet Union was on its last legs.
ISTANBUL-Leader of Turkey’s Pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) Salahettin Demirtas, placed the blame on the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict squarely on the Turkish president and prime minister, reported the Agos newspaper.
Azerbaijan has threatened a “major attack” on the capital of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, amid clashes with ethnic Armenian separatists.
Armenia says the enclave’s Christian Armenians, who declared independence from the largely-Muslim Azerbaijan in 1991, have the right to self- determination.
In a statement on the ceasefire, Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said: “On April 5 at 12:00 (0800 GMT), on the basis of a mutual agreement, military actions on the contact line between the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan are halted”.
In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin was “seriously worried” about the continuing fighting in the region and added that Russian Federation will continue its efforts to ensure a cease-fire.
Co-chaired by the United States, Russia, and France, the group’s role in mediating the conflict has shrunk in recent years, Caucasus analyst Thomas de Waal tells Radio Free Europe.
Both sides accused each other of starting the latest outbreak of violence and it has sparked concern of a wider conflict in the region that could drag in Russian Federation and Turkey.
Senor Hasratyan, a spokesman for the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, told Armenian media that the cessation of hostilities followed successful operations by the Armenian military to regain control of the lost ground.
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After the outbreak of hostilities on 2 April, which involved tanks, helicopters and artillery in the worst violence since the 1990s, Recep Erdogan, president of neighbouring Turkey, ramped up the rhetoric when he predicted that the breakaway region would one day “return” to its owner. He also claimed that Armenian artillery hit Azerbaijani units as they were moving to the front line.
