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STEPANAKERT, Azerbaijan: Armenian and Azerbaijani forces exchanged artillery fire and heavy rockets as fighting escalated in Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday (October 4), with the capital of the breakaway region and Azerbaijan’s second-largest city. .
Armenia said the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert, which has been under bombing since Friday, was attacked again on Sunday and AFP journalists said there were regular explosions and clouds of black smoke rising in parts of the city.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said Armenian forces had bombed Ganja, a city of more than 330,000 people in western Azerbaijan, with images showing buildings in ruins.
The two sides accused each other of targeting civilian areas, as the conflict escalated a week after heavy fighting broke out in the decades-long dispute over the ethnic-Armenian region.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have resisted international calls for a ceasefire and clashes have escalated in recent days, with both sides claiming victories at the front and saying they are causing heavy losses.
In an energetic address to the nation, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev set the conditions for stopping the fighting that would be almost impossible for Armenia to accept.
He said the Armenian forces “must leave our territories, not in words but in deeds” and provide a timetable for a full withdrawal.
Yerevan should also recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, apologize to the Azerbaijani people and admit that the region is not part of Armenia, Aliyev said.
‘PURSUE US LIKE DOGS’
“Nagorno-Karabakh is our land. We have to go back there and we are doing it now,” Aliyev said. “This is the end. We show them who we are. We chase them like dogs.”
Sirens sounded and explosions were heard at regular intervals in Stepanakert, where residents, including several families, were taking refuge in the basement of the city’s Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said that Stepanakert and other cities had been attacked, accusing the Azerbaijani forces of “deliberately targeting the civilian population”.
There were reports of civilians killed and injured in Stepanakert and the historic town of Shusha.
Graph comparing the military forces present in the Nagorno Karabakh region and a map of the conflict zone. (Graphic: AFP / Patricio Arana)
Azerbaijan said Ganja was under artillery fire, including from areas outside of Karabakh on Armenian territory, with at least one civilian killed.
Karabakh separatist forces said they had attacked and destroyed an air base in Ganja, but Baku denied this as a “provocation”.
Azerbaijan ally Turkey accused Armenia of “attacking civilians” in Ganja and reiterated its support for its Turkish and Muslim country as “one nation, two states”.
Karabakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan warned that he would now consider “military installations in the big cities of Azerbaijan” as legitimate targets.
“I ask the residents of these cities to leave immediately,” Harutyunyan said in a Facebook post.
Azerbaijani officials claimed on Sunday that Harutyunyan had been seriously injured while in a bunker hit by shelling, but his office denied this.
‘BOMBS FALLING IN THE YARD’
Azerbaijan claims to have taken control of a number of settlements in recent days, as well as a strategically important plateau.
On Sunday, Aliyev said his forces had retaken the city of Jabrayil, part of an area on the outskirts of Karabakh taken by separatists in the 1990s as a buffer zone, hailing it as a major victory. Armenia denied the claim.
Authorities in both countries have reported nearly 250 deaths since the fighting began, including nearly 40 civilians.
Armenian separatist forces have reported more than 200 deaths, including 51 on Saturday, while Azerbaijan has not released any figures on its military casualties.
Locals gather near the remains of a projectile in the Azerbaijani city of Beylagan on Sunday during the fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region. (Photo: AFP / Tofik Babayev)
Azerbaijan said on Sunday that two civilians were killed in a bombing raid in the southern city of Beylagan, where a journalist working with AFP saw residents rummaging through the rubble of destroyed houses.
“I was baking bread when I heard explosions, I opened the door and saw the bombs fall directly into the patio,” said one woman, showing reporters the shattered windows and partially collapsed roof of her house.
PRAYING FOR PEACE
In Yerevan, the mostly Christian capital of Armenia, residents gathered in churches for Sunday services to pray and light candles.
“I came to ask God for peace, for our country and our soldiers,” Aytsemik Melikyan told AFP in front of the Saint Sarkis church.
Armenian worshipers attend a Sunday service at Saint Sarkis Church in Yerevan. (Photo: AFP)
Russia, the United States and France, who co-chair a mediation group that has failed to achieve a political resolution to the conflict, have called for an immediate halt to the fighting.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed concern about “the increase in casualties” among civilians in a call with his Armenian counterpart on Sunday.
Armenia has said it is “ready to compromise” with the mediators, but Azerbaijan, which considers Karabakh under Armenian occupation, says that the Armenian forces must withdraw completely before a ceasefire can be negotiated.
Karabakh’s declaration of independence from Azerbaijan during the collapse of the Soviet Union sparked a war in the early 1990s that claimed 30,000 lives.
Talks to resolve the conflict have made little progress since the 1994 ceasefire agreement.
