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The Armenian Defense Ministry said Azerbaijani forces shelled the center of the city of Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno Karabakh, on Monday morning with long-range missiles, a day after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that his country’s forces had taken control of the strategic city of Shushi.
This comes as the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced the resumption of clashes with Armenian forces on the Agdam, Aghdra and Khujand axes in the Karabakh region.
The ministry said it had advanced in several places and destroyed heavy machinery, including tanks and artillery.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry released images of drones targeting various Armenian sites in the disputed region.
He noted that Armenian forces were forced to withdraw from some areas due to heavy loss of life and equipment over the past 24 hours, with operations continuing along the front line.
A strategic city
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced the control of his country’s forces over the strategic city of Shushi in the Nagorno Karabakh region, saying that with this step, he qualified it as his occupation by Armenia 28 years ago.
The capture of Shushi is a great victory for Azerbaijan after 6 weeks of battles in the Nagorno Karabakh region, which is not internationally recognized.
The importance of the city of Shushi is that it is located on a hill overlooking the provincial capital Stepanakert, which is located a few kilometers from the city. The remaining Armenia supply road and the link between the Armenian city of Goris and Stepanakert also pass from Shushi.
The city has a symbolic value for the Azeris, who consider it one of their important cultural centers.
Several Azerbaijani cities witnessed demonstrations by the people, expressing their joy at the restoration of their country’s forces in the city of Shushi.
The continuous fighting caused great human and material losses (European)The tension continues
For a month and a half, tension has prevailed in the Karabakh region, amid a full-scale war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the southern Caucasus, where Ankara and Moscow compete.
Under international law, the Nagorno Karabakh region is part of Azerbaijan, but the Armenians, who make up the vast majority of its population, reject the Baku government.
The region has been running its own affairs with the support of Armenia since it seceded from Azerbaijan during a conflict that erupted when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
For its part, the Defense Ministry of the unrecognized region of Nagorno Karabakh announced on Monday that 44 people have died among its soldiers, raising the death toll of the military to 1,221 since the start of fighting with the Azeri forces on 27 of September.
The fighting has escalated to its fiercest level since the 1990s, when nearly 30,000 people were killed.
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