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Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said seven people were killed and 33 others, including children, were shot dead by Armenian forces in the country’s second-largest city, Ganges, last night. The shooting took place less than 24 hours after the fighting had to stop.
A Gendje journalist from the AFP news agency reported that rescuers with bare red hands removed the remains in search of living people.
They took out an almost naked body, which he carefully placed in a white bag, watching and crying for several locals.
A witness said he and others were awakened by a powerful explosion that swept through a one- and two-story, nine-house block of houses in the early morning.
“Everything I have worked for my whole life has been destroyed,” said Zagit Aliyev, a 68-year-old resident.
The agreement to end hostilities in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region to exchange prisoners and remains of the dead was approved by the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers during talks in Moscow.
“Absolute lie”
The ceasefire officially went into effect at noon on Saturday, but the two sides almost immediately began to blame each other for the violations.
On Sunday, the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Ministry said Armenian forces were sticking to a humanitarian ceasefire and accused Azerbaijan of firing at civilian areas.
The allegations that Armenian forces fired on the Ganges are an “outright lie,” the ministry added.
Araik Arutiunian, leader of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, said the situation was calmer on Sunday, but warned that the ceasefire was fragile.
An AFP journalist in the Stepanakert regional administrative center, which has been heavily bombed since the fighting began, reported hearing loud explosions throughout the night.
Nagorno-Karabakh leader Vachram Poghosian said that the Stepanakert night shooting was “a lack of respect for the agreements reached in Moscow” and called on the international community to recognize the independence of the province as a way to end the battles.
New clashes broke out at the end of last month, due to old disagreements between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The disputed region is about 150 thousand. an ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. More than about 30 thousand. after the life-threatening war of the 1990s, Nagorno-Karabakh separated from Azerbaijan.
The separatist government in the region has strong support from Armenia, which, like Azerbaijan, gained independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ceasefire “temporary”
The recent fighting has been the most intense since the war of the 1990s; more than 450 people had already died through them and thousands had to leave their homes.
It is feared that the resumption of fighting will turn into a devastating global conflict that could include Turkey, which strongly supports Azerbaijan, and Russia, which has a military treaty with Armenia.
Armenia and world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron, have condemned the deployment of Turkish fighters from Syria and Libya to reinforce the Azerbaijani army.
France, Russia and the United States, the so-called Minsk Group, have been working for decades to find a lasting solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but have not been able to stop the resumption of fighting, and Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, appears willing to continue with its military intervention.
A senior Azerbaijani official said on Saturday that the ceasefire should have been only “temporary” and that Baku “does not intend to relent” in its efforts to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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