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Baku (AFP)
Armenia and Azerbaijan exchanged accusations of violating the ceasefire aimed at ending the fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region shortly after it took effect on Monday.
And the US State Department previously announced that Armenia and Azerbaijan had agreed to abide by a “humanitarian ceasefire” in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, after two previous attempts to stop bloodshed in the disputed region failed.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said that Armenian forces shelled the city of Tartar and neighboring villages in a “serious violation” of the truce announced by Washington on Sunday and that it was scheduled to start at 08:00 local time (0400 GMT).
In turn, the Armenian Defense Ministry said that Azerbaijani forces committed a “serious violation” of the ceasefire by attacking the positions of combatants in different areas of the front with artillery fire.
Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan emphasized on Facebook that his country “continues to fully adhere to the ceasefire.”
A spokesman for the separatist leader in Karabakh, Fahram Boghossian, declared that “the Azerbaijani side has crudely violated the humanitarian ceasefire agreement for the third time.”
“Our mission today is to defend our land … They left us no choice,” he added in statements on social media.
Hikmat Hajiyev, assistant to the Azerbaijani president, said that it was Armenia that violated the current ceasefire agreement, as well as the previous two.
“Armenia’s goal is to maintain the status quo based on occupation. The Azerbaijani side exercises restraint,” he said in a statement.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been involved in a fight for control of Karabakh since Yerevan-backed Armenian separatists seized the mountainous region during a war in the 1990s that killed 30,000 people.
The current conflict broke out on September 27. Armenia and Azerbaijan exchange accusations of targeting civilians and violating previous ceasefire agreements.
© 2020 AFP
