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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced today, Monday, that his country’s forces are continuing to advance in the Nagorno Karabakh region and that they have retaken more villages from Armenian forces, while the Defense Ministry in Armenia said the shelling Azerbaijani spread today to territories under Armenian sovereignty.
The Azerbaijani president said, via Twitter, that the army had liberated 8 villages: Chapp Rand, Haji Ishaqli and Ghusha in the city of Gabriel, Dorra Gilah Tagh and Buyuk Gilah Tagh in the city of Zangilan, Ishqli, Murad Khanli and Milanli in the city of Qubadli.
Since the outbreak of battles between the two sides on September 27, Azerbaijan said it had managed to regain control of 4 cities, 3 towns and almost 200 villages, as well as strategic hills.
Fierce fighting continues on the front line in Karabakh and seven surrounding areas, with more than a thousand people killed since the fighting began.
Karabakh is reported to be an internationally recognized region as part of Azerbaijan, but Armenians inhabit and control it with an unrecognized administration.
The numbers of the dead
And the region’s Defense Ministry said today that its forces have lost another 11 soldiers in the clashes, bringing the death toll to 1,177 since the clash broke out.
For its part, the Armenian Defense Ministry said a civilian was killed and two others injured in the bombardment launched by Azerbaijani forces on Armenia.
“The Azerbaijani side fired artillery at the positions of the Armenian armed forces and the city of Davit Bek,” a ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan wrote on Twitter.
In a related context, Marc de Caqueray Valmenet, leader of the “Zouaves Paris” group, affiliated with the far-right movement in France, announced that he had gone to Karabakh to fight alongside the Armenians against the Azerbaijani army.
Defining themselves as fascists, who emerged with the slogan “Paris is ours” in late 2017 #French Marc de Cacqueray-Valmenier, leader of the far-right group “Zouaves Paris” (ZVP), with the Armenians #Azerbaijan He went to Nagorno-Karabakh to fight his army. https://t.co/nRuBv96uAR
– new hope (@ hamdhi11) November 1, 2020
Turkish news agency Anadolu said that Valmeni posted this on his account on social media platforms and attached it to a photo of him in a military uniform and with a machine gun.
He cited the French newspaper “Liberation” (Liberation) that Valmeni identified himself as a “fascist”, in addition to the fact that the group he leads pursues a “neo-Nazi” ideology.
Meanwhile, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan today called for an international investigation into the presence of what he called foreign mercenaries in Karabakh, after Armenian forces in the region said they had captured two Syrian fighters.
Azerbaijan has repeatedly denied the presence of foreign fighters in the conflict zone.
However, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said today that Armenian forces in Karabakh had captured a Syrian fighter from Idlib, after they captured a Syrian fighter from Hama on Friday.
Possible war crimes
On the other hand, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michel Bachelet, said today that there are artillery attacks in Karabakh that can reach the level of war crimes, and urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to stop the attacks on areas civilians, schools and hospitals.
It added that despite the agreement reached in Geneva on Friday between Armenia and Azerbaijan to refrain from deliberately targeting civilians, artillery shells were reported to have been fired at populated areas earlier this week.
“While many fake photos were distributed on social media, in-depth investigations by the media revealed conclusive and very disturbing information on video clips showing what appeared to be Azeri forces executing two Armenian prisoners in military clothing without trial” it said in a statement.
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