[ad_1]
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a speech broadcast on state television on Sunday night that Armenia should set a timetable for its withdrawal from Nagorno Karabakh before stopping the fighting that took place there about a week ago.
He added that the Armenian presidency must think carefully before it is too late, stressing that the only thing available is to negotiate an unconditional exit from the region.
Aliyev considered that controlling the city of Gabriel on Sunday is a lesson for Armenia and its supporters, and that they must learn from it, as he himself said. He asked him to recognize that Nagorno-Karabakh is an Azeri land and “apologize to the Azeri people for the occupation, and then a ceasefire can be negotiated.”
Take control of the villages
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry confirmed that since the beginning of the fighting on September 27, 14 villages have been captured, in addition to the strategic Morovdag mountain range.
Aliyev announced on Saturday night, in a tweet, the control of 7 villages during the day. Hours earlier, he had reiterated that the withdrawal of Armenian forces from the “occupied territories” alone could end the conflict that has continued since 1990.
For his part, the Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, considered that Armenia faces “perhaps the most fateful moment in its contemporary history”, and called for mobilization to achieve “victory”.
The Nagorno Karabakh region, which has an Armenian majority, declared secession from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, sparking a war that caused 30,000 deaths.
No peace agreement was signed between the two sides, although the front has been almost frozen since then, but it witnessed clashes from time to time.
The two sides blame each other for the resumption of fighting on September 27, which has produced what could be the most dangerous crisis in the region since the 1994 ceasefire, and raised fears of an open war between Armenia and Azerbaijan .
European call
In this context, the European Union called for an immediate end to the fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan and called for negotiations between them to begin as soon as possible under the umbrella of the Minsk Group.
The European Commissioner for Security and Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, said in a tweet on his Twitter page that the high number of civilian casualties is unacceptable.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said that the Armenian army bombed the city of Ganja, the second largest city in Azerbaijan, after the capital Baku.
The Azerbaijani Defense Minister said the bombing took place from Armenian territory, which was denied by the Armenian government. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported the killing of a civilian and 4 other injuries in the Ganja bombing.
Turkish condemnation
On Sunday, Turkey condemned “the attacks carried out by Armenian forces in the city of Ganja in the context of the conflict related to Karabakh.”
Turkey supports Azerbaijan in the decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku considers to be under Armenian occupation.
However, the Armenian Defense Ministry denied that the Ganja bombing took place from its territory and said it was carried out from the Karabakh region.
[ad_2]
