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The Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani armies have accused each other of firing rockets and other projectiles at civilian areas just before Saturday morning, when a ceasefire regime was due to take effect.
The Armenian Defense Ministry has reported that controlled separatist forces ordered a ceasefire in the disputed enclave.
Shušan Stepanian, spokesman for the ministry of the unrecognized republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, “ordered a ceasefire of the defense army” on the social network Facebook.
The ceasefire was agreed after an 11-hour marathon of talks between the foreign ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia in Moscow on Friday.
During the ceasefire, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the parties will exchange the bodies and prisoners of the dead and others held by them, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The head of Russian diplomacy also noted that Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to start working on a territorial dispute over a lasting peaceful solution to Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Azerbaijan and Armenia … are starting meaningful talks to reach a peaceful agreement as soon as possible,” Lavrov told reporters. He added that the negotiations would be mediated by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE): France, Russia and the United States.
The resumption of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 27, a region controlled by ethnic Armenian separatists who seceded from Azerbaijan during the devastating war of the early 1990s, claimed the lives of some 400 people and forced thousands to flee their homes.
The most recent clashes have been the worst since the 1994 ceasefire.
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