Azerbaijan and Armenia rejected international appeals for dialogue, raising fears of an all-out war.
Fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces around the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region has reportedly continued for a fifth day, with both sides refusing to back down and focusing on international negotiations.
Violent clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the years in the broken region erupted on Sunday, killing scores of both sides.
Azerbaijan’s general prosecutor said on Thursday that Armenian shelling had killed a civilian and badly damaged a train station in the town of Tatar, 10 km from Nagorno-Karabakh, in the morning.
Separately, the country’s defense ministry said its forces carried out artillery strikes during the night, “against the positions of Armenian forces in the occupied territories.”
The AFP news agency reported that people who claimed to have been attacked by drones in the city claimed that the city had been attacked by drains, according to the AFP news agency.
Ethnic-Armenian officials in the area called the overnight situation along the front line “tense” and said both sides fired artillery.
“The enemy tried to reorganize its army, but Armenian forces suppressed all such efforts,” they said.
Armenian officials also claimed that two French nationals working as journalists for Le Monde were wounded on Thursday during a shootout by Azeri forces in the Armenian city of Martuni, west of the Morgo-Karabakh region.
The journalists were being taken to hospital, officials said in a statement.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s declaration of independence from Azerbaijan led to the outbreak of war in the early 1990s, in which 30,000 people were killed, but it is still not recognized as independent by any country, including Armenia.
Armenia and the broken region declared martial law and military dynamics last week, while Azerbaijan imposed military rule and curfews in major cities.
Talks for a settlement of the conflict have largely stalled since the 1994 ceasefire agreement. France, Russia and the United States mediated peace efforts as “Minsk Group”, but the last major push for a peace deal broke in 2010.
Both sides claim that the conflict has inflicted heavy losses on opposition forces that threaten to draw regional powers to Turkey and Russia, which support the opposition.
Yerevan, who is in a military alliance with the former Soviet Union led by Moscow, has accused Turkey of sending mercenaries from northern Syria to provoke Azerbaijani forces in the conflict, and was concerned that members of illegal armed groups, including Syria and Libya, were involved. The claims were rejected by Azerbaijan.
Yerevan also said earlier this week that a Turkish F-16 flying in support of Baku’s forces had shot down an Armenian Su-25 fighter jet, but Ankara and Baku denied the claim.
Bernard Smith of Al Jazeera, reporting from the Armenian capital, said there was a fear that the clash could lead to a full-scale war.
Smith said there had already been clashes in the border areas between Armenia and Azerbaijan beyond Nagorno-Karabakh.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify the claims made by both parties.
Despite mounting international pressure, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have both rejected the idea of talks, calling for a halt to the fighting.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron issued a recent call in a telephone conversation late Wednesday to call for an end to the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh and said they were ready to intensify diplomatic efforts to help resolve the conflict.
