[ad_1]
The truce agreed on Saturday between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the clashes over Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist territory located in Azerbaijan, but controlled by Armenia, did not last. The truce was announced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after 10 hours of negotiations and was aimed at stopping the fighting, which has been going on since the end of September, to allow the two countries in conflict to exchange prisoners and wounded, with the mediation of the Cross Red But already in the hours after the agreement was signed, Armenia and Azerbaijan had accused each other of having committed crimes against civilians and on Sunday, Azerbaijan, just 24 since the start of the ceasefire, admitted to carrying out air strikes. .
Azerbaijan said it bombed an Armenian regiment and caused heavy casualties, although international news agencies could not confirm the information. A spokesman for the Nagorno-Karabakh separatist government told a Reuters have no news of the attack. On Sunday, Azerbaijan accused Armenia of shelling a residential area in Ganja, the country’s second-largest city, into an apartment building. Nine people were reported killed in the attack and 34 were injured. Also in this case, in terms of the number of victims, it is information that comes from government sources, difficult for the international press to verify. On October 4, separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh said they had attacked the Ganja military airport after Azerbaijani forces bombed the region’s capital, Stepanakert.
Al Jazeera writes that according to the government of Azerbaijan since the beginning of the fighting more than 40 civilians have been killed and 200 injured. Azerbaijan also accused Armenia of trying, without success, to attack an Azerbaijani hydroelectric power station in Mingachevir. However, Armenia denied carrying out the attack. Arayik Harutyunyan, the president of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, also accused Azerbaijan of unsuccessfully trying to take control of the southern Nagorno-Karabakh city of Hadrut during the truce and not having started, as agreed. , the prisoner swap that should have started on Sunday.
– Read also: The Nagorno-Karabakh problem
The international community’s fears about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are that it could spread to the two historical allies of the countries in conflict: Turkey, an ally of Azerbaijan, and Russia, an ally of Armenia. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu had asked his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in a phone call on Sunday to pressure Armenia to abide by the truce, evidently without success. Since the conflict resumed on September 27, the deaths on both sides have been more than 300.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a territory of about 11 thousand square kilometers that is located within Azerbaijan but whose population is mainly Armenian and Christian (the most common religion in Azerbaijan is Shiite Islam). In 1988 it declared its independence, with the support of Armenia: years of very violent ethnic clashes followed, until the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which started in 1992, ended in 1994 and caused at least 30,000 deaths. Additionally, tens of thousands of people were driven from their homes or forced to emigrate. Today Nagorno-Karabakh declares itself an independent state but is not recognized by any country in the world, not even Armenia. In practice, the region is controlled by Armenia, although for the international community it would remain part of Azerbaijan.
The most important role in pacification has so far fallen on Russia. Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet countries, and Russia is an important trading partner of both and sells weapons to them. It is also the main force within the Minsk Group, that is, that group of three countries (in addition to Russia, also the United States and France) that in 1994 negotiated the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan and that since then has painfully tried and without success, to reach a peace agreement. For the past two decades, it has always been Russia that persuaded the two countries of a ceasefire when fighting resumed.
[ad_2]
