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The president of Azerbaijan assured on Sunday that his country’s forces had recovered the strategic city of to download in Nagorno Karabakh, a separatist region supported by Armenia, which insisted instead that the struggle for this key location continued.
Taking Shusha would mark a major Azerbaijani victory, six weeks after fighting broke out in Nagorno Karabakh, a largely Armenian-populated enclave that separated from Azerbaijan in the 1990s, sparking a war that killed 30,000 people.
The strategic city is located on cliffs about 15 kilometers from Stepanakert, the main city of Nagorno Karabakh, and on the main road that leads to the territory of Armenia, a country allied to the separatists in this enclave.
Both sides have reported violent fighting around the city in recent days, after Azerbaijani forces advanced through the southern flank of Nagorno Karabakh and passed through its mountains.
In a televised speech on Sunday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that the city had been retaken.
“With great pride and joy, I report that the city of Shusha has been liberated,” said Aliyev, dressed in a military uniform and standing in front of an Azerbaijani flag.
This November 8 “will enter the history of the people of Azerbaijan” because it is the day that “we have returned to Shusha,” added the president.
“Our liberation march continues. We will go to the end, until the total liberation of the occupied territories, ”Aliyev insisted.
In Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, residents took to the streets waving national flags to celebrate this announcement.
‘The fortress city resists’
Armenian sources claimed that there were intense fighting in the city of Shusha and that the battle was far from over.
“The fighting continues in Shusha, wait and believe in our army” A head of the Armenian Ministry of Defense, Artsrun Hovhannisyan, said on Twitter.
Armenian ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan stated that “the fiercest fighting” had occurred at night in the city, while the government declared that taking back Shusha was an “unreachable chimera for Azerbaijan”.
“Despite heavy destruction, the fortress city resists the enemy’s blows”, he claimed.
New fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenian separatists broke out in late September for control of Nagorno Karabakh, which declared its independence almost 30 years ago.
This declaration has not been recognized internationally, not even by Armenia, and the enclave remains part of Azerbaijan under international law.
The recent fighting is the worst in decades, with more than 1,000 confirmed dead, including dozens of civilians. Although this balance could be much higher.
So far, three attempts at humanitarian truces have failed, negotiated with the mediation of Russia, France and the United States.
The three countries co-chair the Minsk Group, the main mediator of the conflict, which helped negotiate a truce between the two rival former Soviet republics in 1994, although they failed to find a lasting solution to the long-frozen conflict.
Armenia and Azerbaijan accuse each other of attacking civilian areas during the new clashes. The UN warned this week of possible “war crimes” in Nagorno Karabakh, due to indiscriminate attacks against the civilian population.
The conflict raises fears of an intervention by both Russia, which forms a military alliance with Armenia, and Turkey, an ally of Azerbaijan.
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