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Armenia attacked several civilian targets on Sunday, including the cities of Tartar, Horadiz and Ganja, the second most important in Azerbaijan. World leaders call for a ceasefire. More than 220 people have died since fighting began in the Nagorno-Karabakh region a week ago.
“Armenia has launched rockets on Ganja. The Armenian armed forces deliberately attack the cities of Tartar and Horadiz with heavy artillery and rocket systems. There have also been rocket attacks on cities in the Fuzuli and Jabrail regions,” said the adviser to the Presidency of Azerbaijan. , Hikmet Hajiyev.
According to the senior Azerbaijani official, “several civilians have been killed or injured as a result of these attacks.”
Hikmet Hajiyev indicated that in recent days, the Armenia launched more than 10,000 projectiles of various types against densely populated areas, causing serious damage to more than 500 homes.
The senior official stressed the need to distinguish between the military and civilians during the confrontation.
“The large-scale Armenian attacks on villages in Azerbaijan without any military need are not accidental. The systematic attacks by Armenia are testimony to the fact that it was a plan prepared in advance and included in the army’s combat readiness program. Armenian, “he said.
Azerbaijan’s armed forces respond “appropriately” to annihilate enemy fire stations and ensure the safety of the civilian population, Hikmet Hajiyev said.
Separately, on Saturday, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his country faces “perhaps the most decisive moment in its history”, referring to the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, where Yerevan-backed separatists fight Azerbaijani soldiers.
Leaders condemn attacks on civilians and call for a ceasefire
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) condemned the indiscriminate bombardment of populated areas in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, citing “dozens” of civilian casualties on both sides of the line.
“The ICRC strongly condemns the indiscriminate shelling and other alleged illegal attacks carried out with explosive weapons in cities and other populated areas, killing civilians and causing them terrible injuries,” Martin Schüepp, ICRC regional director for AFP, said in a statement quoted by AFP. . Eurasia in Geneva.
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, asked his Armenian counterpart, Nikol Pashinian, during a telephone conversation, an immediate ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh and the start of negotiations with Azerbaijan.
The deputy spokeswoman for the German executive, Ulrike Demmer, explained in a statement that the conversation between the two leaders on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict took place on Saturday. Angela Merkel stressed that all parties must abandon hostilities. […] and that a negotiation must begin, “said Ulrike Demmer
He too Russia expressed concern “about the increase in the number of casualties among the civilian population” in the conflict between the Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Azerbaijani army for the eighth consecutive day.
After speaking by phone with the head of Armenian diplomacy, Zohrab Mnatsakanian, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly assumed that he had called for “a ceasefire as soon as possible” in that region.
The Russian position in defense of pacification in the Nagorno-Karabakh region joins the words of other world leaders in recent days, such as the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres.
Nagorno-Karabakh at the center of various interests
At the center of the deterioration of relations between Yerevan and Baku is the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the southern Caucasus, where there are divergent interests of different powers, in particular Turkey, Russia, Iran and Western countries.
This territory, with an Armenian majority, integrated in 1921 into Azerbaijan by the Soviet authorities, unilaterally proclaimed independence in 1991, with the support of Armenia.
After a war that left 30,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees, a ceasefire was signed in 1994 and the mediation of the Minsk Group, formed within the OSCE, was accepted, but armed skirmishes continued to be frequent.
In July this year, the two countries were embroiled in smaller-scale clashes that claimed some 20 lives. The most important recent clashes date back to April 2016, with a death toll of 110.
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