Azerbaijan and Armenia accused each other of bombing military positions and villages, breaking a ceasefire day in border clashes between the former Soviet republics.
the Azerbaijan The Defense Ministry said Thursday that one of its soldiers was killed, while the Armenian Defense Ministry said a civilian was wounded in the village of Chinari by an attack by Azerbaijan drones.
Before that, 15 soldiers from both sides and one civilian had been killed since Sunday in the outbreak between nations that waged a war in the 1990s over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In a rhetoric storm on both sides, Azerbaijan warned Armenia that it could attack the Metsamor nuclear power plant if its Mingechavir warehouse or other strategic outlets were affected.
Neighbors have long been in conflict over the breakup of Azerbaijan, mainly the Armenian ethnic region of Nagorno-Karabakh. But the latest outbreaks occur around the Tavush region in northeast Armenia, about 300 km (190 miles) from the enclave.
“With no gains on the battlefield, Azerbaijani military units began bombing villages … deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure and population,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
The Armenian defense ministry accused the Azerbaijan army of mobile positions while using villagers as “human shields”.
Azerbaijan denied attacking civilians and made the same accusation against Armenia of bombing villages.
A correspondent for the Reuters news agency reportedly saw several partially destroyed houses in the villages of Dondar Gushchu, Agdam and Alibeyli in Azerbaijan.
Local villagers on both sides of the border told the AFP news agency that their houses had been attacked and they feared for their lives.
“An artillery shell hit our yard, 10 meters from the house,” said resident Shain Abiyev in the Azerbaijani village of Dondar Quscu, near the border.
“Fortunately, my family was not at home, but if they had been in the house it would have been a tragedy.”
In Aygepar, on the Armenian side, Evelina Hovhannisyan, 70, said she had spent eight hours in her bathroom while the village was under fire.
A woman shows damage to her home, which locals say was damaged during a recent bombardment by Armenian forces, in armed clashes on the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, in the village of Dondar Quschi, Azerbaijan [Aziz Karimov/Reuters]
Azerbaijani chancellor replaced
In a surprise move on Thursday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev fired his foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, after denouncing his performance, accusing him of “meaningless negotiations” with Armenia.
He was replaced by the Minister of Education, Jeyhun Bayramov.
The fighting has sparked calls for an immediate downsizing of the United States, the European Union and the regional power corridor Russia. Turkey has spoken out in support of its ally, Azerbaijan.
International concern increases due to the threat to stability in a region that serves as a corridor for pipelines that carry oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to world markets.
It is unclear what caused the outbreak this summer, but analysts say it could have been a small incident like a cross-border shooting that escalated rapidly.
Olesya Vartanyan, senior analyst for the South Caucasus for the International Crisis Group, told AFP that a major confrontation would attract regional powers from Russia and Turkey.
But he said it seemed unlikely that the crisis would escalate as “neither side has territorial claims” in the northern border areas and the fight had not spread to Karabakh.
Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh declared their independence during a conflict that erupted when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Although a ceasefire was agreed in 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia frequently accuse each other of attacks around Nagorno-Karabakh and throughout Azerbaijan-Borderia Armenia.
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