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Armenia declared martial law and ordered the full mobilization of its armed forces after claiming to have destroyed several Azerbaijani planes and tanks in clashes in a disputed region on Sunday.
Armenia said that Azerbaijan had carried out an air and artillery strike in the disputed region, Nagorno-Karabakh, but Azerbaijan said it had responded to the Armenian bombardment.
Human rights activists in Armenia said that two civilians, a woman and a child, had been killed by the Azerbaijani bombings. Armenian military officers have reported at least 10 casualties on their side.
Officials in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, said an unspecified number of its civilians had been killed and six wounded, and Nagorno-Karabakh said 10 of its military personnel had died. The reports could not be independently confirmed.
The Azerbaijani army said it had taken control of six villages in Nagorno-Karabakh as of Sunday afternoon, a claim that Armenia rejected.
The long-standing dispute in the southern Caucasus draws regional and western concern because the area is a corridor for pipelines that transport oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to global markets.
Turkey has strong cultural and economic ties with Azerbaijan and has threatened to support it in any conflict. Russia, another regional power, is traditionally close to Armenia, but has had growing ties with Azerbaijani elites in recent years.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a statement posted on Twitter that Armenia had “proved once again that it is the greatest threat to peace and tranquility in the region” and that Turkey supported Azerbaijan “with all its means, as usual”.
Armenia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its troops had destroyed three tanks and shot down two helicopters and three UAVs in response to an attack on civilian targets, including the Nagorno-Karabakh capital Stepanakert.
“Our response will be proportionate, and the political-military leadership of Azerbaijan bears full responsibility for the situation,” the ministry said in a statement echoed by the Foreign Ministry.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote on Twitter: “We stand strong with our army to protect our homeland from the Azeri invasion.”
Azerbaijan denied the Armenian Defense Ministry’s statement, saying it had “a complete advantage over the enemy at the front”, and accused the Armenian forces of launching “deliberate and targeted” attacks along the front line.
“We defend our territory, our cause is correct,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a speech to the nation.
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 separated from the country when the Soviet Union dissolved.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-year war in the region until a ceasefire in 1994, and since then Nagorno-Karabakh has governed itself as the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh.
Both countries have continued to accuse each other of violating the ceasefire in the enclave and elsewhere along its border in subsequent years, including throughout 2020, with more than a dozen soldiers and civilians killed in fighting in the last months.
At least 200 people died in an outbreak of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in April 2016.
Reuters contributed to this report
