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Clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis escalated on Saturday across most of the Nagorno-Karabakh front, and Armenia acknowledged significant losses among separatists, Agerpres writes.
Armenia faces “perhaps the most decisive moment in its history,” Prime Minister Nikol Pasinian said in a televised speech on Saturday.
On Saturday night a national prayer for Nagorno-Karabakh and its defenders was held in all churches in Armenia and the diaspora.
On the seventh day of hostilities in the enclave that Azerbaijan is trying to reconquer, the Armenian Defense Ministry assured that the separatist troops had rejected a massive attack. The Nagorno-Karabakh fighters “destroyed a large military group,” said an army spokeswoman, Shushan Stepanian.
Yerevan officially announced the death of another 51 soldiers of the army of the enclave, with an official balance of the clashes exceeding 240 dead.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) has announced the killing of at least 64 Syrian pro-Turkish fighters in the territory claimed by the Azeri since the beginning of the fighting. The NGO claims that Turkey has sent 1,200 Syrians who fought against the Bashar al-Assad regime to fight alongside Azerbaijani forces against separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In turn, Azerbaijan announced that it had recaptured the village of Madaguiz, allowing it to control the road linking Armenia to Karabakh.
New explosions hit Stepanakert on Saturday, the capital of this separatist territory regularly flown over by Azerbaijani drones and targeted, for the first time on Friday, by heavy artillery fire. The sirens of ambulances heading to Stepanakert sounded in the Caucasus mountains at night, according to an AFP journalist.
In Armenia, on the road from Yerevan to Goris, a city near Nagorno-Karabakh, volunteers, ordinary citizens driving their personal cars, were heading to the battlefield to evacuate Armenian families fleeing the shelling.
Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave populated primarily by Armenians, separated from Azerbaijan after the fall of the USSR, sparking a war in the early 1990s that resulted in 30,000 deaths. The front has been almost frozen since then, despite regular fighting.
The president of the separatist territory, Arayik Harutiunian, who on Saturday announced his departure to the front to fight alongside his troops, said the “final battle” for Nagorno-Karabakh has begun.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has insisted on withdrawing Armenian forces from the “occupied territories”. “We will take back our territories, it is our legitimate right and our historical goal,” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.
Since the start of hostilities on 27 September, partial casualties of 242 have been recorded: 209 Karabakh soldiers, 14 Armenian civilians and 19 Azerbaijani civilians. Baku did not report its military casualties.
The actual number of casualties could be much higher, as Yerevan claims 3,000 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed, while Baku claims to have killed 2,300 Armenian soldiers.
Both sides have largely ignored calls from the international community to end the violence. Russia, the United States and France, the three countries involved in mediating the OSCE-led conflict, have also called for a ceasefire.
Iran, a neighbor of Armenia and Azerbaijan, warned on Saturday of any “intrusion” into its territory after several Iranian villages along the border were hit by mortar fire.
Another cause for concern is the deployment of pro-Turkish fighters in Syria in support of the Azerbaijani troops. Ankara is an ally of the Baku authorities, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also urged the departure of Armenian troops from Nagorno-Karabakh. On Saturday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev thanked his Turkish counterpart and the “brother Turkish people” for their support in a letter issued by the Azerbaijani presidency.
The Baku authorities have assured that no foreign soldier is fighting alongside their troops. “Azerbaijan does not need it,” Azerbaijan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fariz Rzayev said on Saturday.
Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that 300 jihadist fighters had left Syria to join the Azerbaijani forces.
Editor: Iulia Iancu
