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Armenia said on Saturday October 3, 2020 that it would use “all necessary means” to protect people of Armenian descent from an attack by Azerbaijan, which said its forces were making progress on the ground in their fight for control of the enclave. mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ignoring a French mediation attempt, the two warring parties traded missile strikes for the seventh day, in the latest renewal of the decades-long conflict that could lead to the polarization of Russia and Turkey.
The death toll has risen to at least 230 in the fighting around Nagorno Karabakh, an enclave of ethnic Armenians within Azerbaijan that has not been under their control since the 1990s.
Each side announced the destruction of hundreds of tanks for the other. Azerbaijan declared victories and President Ilham Aliyev congratulated one of his country’s military leaders for controlling a village in Karabakh.
Aliyev declared on social media: “Today the Azerbaijani army raised the Azerbaijani flag in Madagiz. Madagiz is for us.” It was not yet possible to independently verify the situation on the ground.
Artsron Hovhannisyan, an official with the Armenian Ministry of Defense, said:
The situation changes frequently. “In such a big war, such changes are natural. We can take a position and then renounce it in an hour,” he told reporters.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told his compatriots in a televised speech that the fighting at the front was intense.
“So far, we have already had large human losses, both military and civil, and large amounts of military equipment are no longer usable, but the enemy still cannot solve any of its strategic problems,” he added.
The Armenian armed forces have so far refrained from entering the war, along with those of Nagorno Karabakh. However, in a televised speech, Pashinyan described the conflict as a national conflict, similar to the country’s war with Ottoman Turkey in the early 20th century.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said Armenia, as the guarantor of Nagorno Karabakh’s security, will take “all necessary means and steps” to prevent what it called “massive atrocities” by Azerbaijani forces and their ally Turkey. A spokeswoman for the ministry declined to comment on what steps they could take.
The current fighting is the fiercest since the 1990s and reinforces international concerns about stability in the South Caucasus, the region that transports oil and gas from Azerbaijan to world markets.
Violence first broke out in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in 1988, when Armenia and Azerbaijan were within the former Soviet Union, and some 30,000 people died in the conflict before a ceasefire in 1994.
While Russia, the United States and France called for an end to hostilities, Turkey strongly supported Azerbaijan and reiterated that what it calls Armenian “occupiers” must withdraw, rejecting “superficial” demands for a ceasefire.
The two sides continued to exchange accusations of foreign involvement, as Pashinyan said Armenia has information that 150 high-ranking Turkish officers are helping to direct Azerbaijan’s military operations.
Azerbaijan and Turkey have repeatedly denied the participation of Turkish forces. The two countries also denied assurances from Armenia, Russia and France that Syrian opposition fighters were fighting on the Azerbaijani side.
Azerbaijan responded by saying that people of Armenian descent, from Syria, Lebanon, Russia, Georgia, Greece and the United Arab Emirates, had been deployed or were on their way to work as “foreign terrorist fighters” on the Armenian side.
Nagorno Karabakh said 51 more soldiers were killed, bringing the total losses to 198.
Azerbaijan says 19 of its civilians were killed, but has not disclosed its military losses. Nagorno Karabakh announced the killing of 11 civilians and two in Armenia.
