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Bloody battles continued on Monday between Azerbaijani forces and Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Since Sunday, the separatist forces, backed by the political, military and economic support of Armenia, and the Azerbaijani forces have been fighting the bloodiest battles in the region since the 1990s.
And the separatist authorities announced that 26 of their soldiers died Monday night in fighting against Azerbaijani forces, bringing their total human losses since the outbreak of fighting on Sunday to 84 dead.
This brings the initial death toll from the fighting to 95, including 11 civilians. Nine in Azerbaijan and two on the Armenian side, noting that since the outbreak of fighting, Baku has not announced the death toll of the military.
Many expect the human losses to be much greater than has been announced so far, as each side claims it caused hundreds of military losses on the other side.
Azerbaijan, a country that speaks one of the branches of the Turkish language and has a Shiite majority, demands to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh, the mountainous region with an Armenian majority and whose separation from Baku was not recognized by the international community, not even by Armenia, in 1991.
It is feared that if a direct war breaks out between Muslim Azerbaijan and predominantly Christian Armenia, two regional powers, Russia and Turkey, will be embroiled in the conflict.
For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Turkey had transferred more than 300 fighters from Syrian territory to Nagorno Karabakh.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry rejected the accusations, claiming that “mercenaries of ethnic Armenians” from the Middle East were fighting alongside the separatists.
In turn, a spokesman for the European Chancellery declared that “any interference in this conflict is unacceptable”, considering that its escalation is “very worrying”.
Armenia’s ambassador to Russia, Ratan Toganyan, told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency that his country would not hesitate to use the Iskander ballistic missiles that Moscow supplied to it if Ankara used the F-16s in the conflict.
On Monday, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Turkey has a “direct presence on the ground.” He added that Turkish military experts are “fighting side by side” with Azerbaijan, which according to Yerevan also uses Turkish weapons, including drones and fighter jets.
