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Fighting escalated dramatically today between Azerbaijan and the Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh mountain range, with at least 29 people killed on the second day of heavy fighting.
The two sides hit each other, with rockets and artillery, in the worst explosion of violence in this conflict that has lasted almost 30 years.
Any move towards a totalitarian war could drag the major regional powers, Russia and Turkey, into conflict. Moscow has signed a defense alliance with Armenia, which provides vital support to Nagorno-Karabakh and is a link to the rest of the world. Ankara supports its own “relatives”, the Azeris born in Turkey.
“We haven’t seen anything like this since the ceasefire reached in the 1990s. The fighting is taking place on all fronts,” said Alessia Vartanian, Crisis Group senior analyst for the South Caucasus.
Nagorno-Karabakh said 27 of its soldiers died today in clashes with Azerbaijani forces and another 31 on Sunday, following an attack it said it received from Azerbaijan. The number of injured is about 200. However, local authorities say that today they have recovered some of the land they lost yesterday.
Azerbaijan’s Attorney General’s Office said that two Azerbaijani nationals were killed today and five others yesterday, while 30 were injured. There are no official reports of casualties among the armed forces of Azerbaijan.
Fear of total war
Vartanian said that the use of missiles and artillery posed a greater risk to civilians and that in such a case it would be more difficult to escalate the situation through diplomatic means. “If there were massive losses (of civilians) it would be extremely difficult to limit the fighting and we would certainly see a full-scale war with the possible intervention of Turkey or Russia or both,” he explained.
Russia has called for an immediate ceasefire, while Turkey has said it supports Azerbaijan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded that Armenia immediately withdraw from the occupied Azeri territories, stressing that the time has come to end the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis.
Angela Frangian, a filmmaker who lives in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, said residents rushed to shelters and bombardments were heard. All the stores are closed and hardly anyone is on the streets.
Turkish support
The Armenian parliament has previously condemned the “military attack by all means” that it says launched Azerbaijan into the enclave. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalian said that Turkish military experts were fighting alongside the Azeris and that Turkey was providing drones and fighter jets to Azerbaijan. Baku denies these accusations while there was no immediate reaction from Turkey. However, many Turkish officials, including President Erdogan, have pledged to help the Azeris.
The Interfax news agency quoted Azerbaijan Defense Ministry spokesman Anar Eviazov as saying that his country’s armed forces had occupied several strategically important hills near the Talis village in Nagorno-Karabakh. Eviazov also said that Lernik Vardanyan, the commander of the Armenian air strike battalion, had died near Talis, but that Armenia had spoken of “misinformation.”
Two Syrian rebels, members of Turkish-backed militant groups in northern Syria, told Reuters last week that they would be sent there as a contingent to help Azerbaijan, in coordination with Ankara. The agency could not verify this information from another source.
Hikmat Hajiyev, an adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, called it “foolish” to say that Syrian fighters were helping his country.
Source: skai.gr
