MOSCOW – Fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which was reported to be fierce on Sunday, escalated quickly with both sides claiming action from artillery, helicopters and tanks on the disputed border.
Military action is centered on the broken province of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region north of Turkey and Iran, where ethnic tensions and historical grievances have been burning for decades.
The fighting on Sunday, however, was more intense than the usual periodical border dispute and both governments used military language to describe the events as a war. Before Sunday, the last big growth was in the year 2016. Each side accused the other of using artillery against civilians.
“The enemy has launched an attack on the Karabakh region,” Armenian Prime Minister Nicole Pashinyan said in a Facebook post.
Mr Pashinyan said the army in the Karabakh region, an ethnic Armenian enclave that claims to be an independent state but largely unrecognized, withdrew the attack.
But Azerbaijan’s defense ministry later issued a statement saying it had launched a “counterattack” with tanks, helicopters and rocket artillery.
In a statement issued by the Russian news agencies, Azerbaijan said that the military operation had destroyed “deep-seated” Armenian Armed Forces troops, military equipment and supplies “near the border as well as inside the country.” He said he destroyed 12 short-range anti-aircraft installations in Armenia.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said its forces destroyed three tanks and shot down two helicopters.
In past flare-ups, both sides have exaggerated the extent of their successes and their enemies ’breaches of unforeseen agreements, although the prospect of a giant war is always clear. The Karabakh region maintains a system of calling its almost male population as minutes, and the aggregation was announced Sunday morning.
The fighting in and around the Karabakh region, called Armenia Artasakh, was one of the most vicious in the post-Soviet conflict. A ceasefire was declared in 1994, but violence has erupted several times since.
Moscow sells arms to both sides and has also broken ceasefire agreements. Russia has a military base in Armenia. The Armenian Diaspora of France and the United States have provided assistance to the Karabakh region, including the financial construction of strategic mountain-access routes.
