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YEREVAN (AP) – Armenian separatists in the separatist Nagorno Karabakh region said on Monday that 15 of their more fighters were killed in an outbreak of a territorial dispute, bringing the total death toll to 39 when the clashes entered in a second day.
World leaders have urged a halt to fighting between Azerbaijan and the Armenian rebels after clashes broke out on Sunday that raised the specter of an all-out conflict that could draw regional powers Russia and Turkey.
Former Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked since the early 1990s in a territorial dispute over the Armenian-backed secessionist enclave, with deadly fighting breaking out earlier this year and in 2016.
The Karabakh defense ministry announced a total of 32 military deaths on Monday.
Seven civilian deaths were previously reported, including an Azerbaijani family of five, a woman and a child on the Armenian side.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said that heavy fighting continued overnight and Monday morning along the front line and claimed that it had regained positions taken on Sunday by Azerbaijani forces.
But Baku called for additional advances.
Azerbaijani forces “are attacking enemy positions using artillery and aviation rockets … and have taken various strategic positions around the town of Talysh,” the Defense Ministry said.
“The enemy is retreating,” he added.
Martial law
Armenian military officials said Azerbaijani forces continued to attack rebel positions with heavy artillery, while the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry accused the separatist forces of bombing civilian targets in the city of Terter.
Baku claimed to have killed 550 separatist soldiers, a report denied by Armenia.
Clashes broke out on Sunday morning and both sides accused each other of initiating hostilities.
The struggle between Muslim Azerbaijan and predominantly Christian Armenia threatened to entangle regional players Russia, which is in a military alliance with Yerevan, and Turkey, which backs Baku.
Armenia accused Turkey of meddling in the conflict and sending mercenaries to the battlefield.
France, Germany, Italy, the United States, the European Union and Russia have called for a ceasefire.
Armenia and Karabakh declared martial law and military mobilization on Sunday, while Azerbaijan imposed a military regime and a curfew in the big cities.
Ethnic Armenian separatists seized Baku’s Nagorno-Karabakh region in a war in the 1990s that claimed 30,000 lives.
Talks to resolve one of the worst conflicts to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 have largely stalled since the 1994 ceasefire agreement.
France, Russia and the United States have mediated peace efforts such as the “Minsk Group,” but the last big push for a peace deal collapsed in 2010.
