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The resurgence of fighting on September 27 has been the worst in Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas since 1994, when this region of Azerbaijan came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenians.
Shushan Stepanian, a spokesman for the Armenian Defense Ministry, told The Associated Press that “there were intense clashes throughout the front line” and that Armenian forces had shot down three planes.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry did not comment on the report of the crashed planes, but said that Armenian artillery had fired on civilian territory in Azerbaijan, including the city of Terter.
Nagorno-Karabakh officials have reported the loss of more than 150 soldiers. At the time, Azerbaijani officials did not provide information on the military damage suffered, only stating that 19 civilians had been killed and another 55 had been injured.
Nagorno-Karabakh, which is dominated by ethnic Armenians, separated from Yerevan with Azerbaijan during the 1991-1994 war. Although a ceasefire was declared in 1994, a territorial dispute over the region has so far erupted between the parties. Armenian forces controlled not only the Nagorno-Karabakh region itself, but considerable areas outside its official territory.
The United Nations Security Council has adopted several resolutions calling for the withdrawal of forces from the territories, but the Armenian forces have ignored them.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a television interview that the Armenians must first withdraw their forces and only then will it be possible to end the fighting.
In an interview with al Jazeera TV, an excerpt from the presidential press service on Saturday, Aliyev criticized the Conflict Mediation Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for helping to resolve a territorial dispute of long standing on Nagorno-Karabakh.
One of the reasons for the ongoing clashes is that “the mediators are not demanding or pressuring for the implementation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions,” he said.
“It just came to our attention then. The conflict must be resolved now,” Aliyev said.
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