On Saturday, thousands of people marched on the Golden Gate Bridge, drawing attention to the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region involving Azerbaijani and Armenian forces.
About 3,000 people attended the event, with no incidents reported.
Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on a Russian-brokered ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting Saturday, but immediately accused each other of derailing the deal in a bid to end the worst hostilities in the separatist region in more than a quarter-century.
Both sides blamed it for breaking an effective fight with new attacks from noon (0800 GMT).
The ceasefire was announced overnight after 10 hours of talks in Moscow sponsored by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The deal stipulated that a ceasefire should pave the way for negotiations to resolve the conflict.
If a ceasefire is reached, it would mark a major diplomatic uprising for Russia, which has a security pact with Armenia but maintains warm relations with Azerbaijan. But the agreement was immediately challenged by mutual claims of breach.
Shortly after the ceasefire was enforced, the Armenian army accused Azerbaijan of firing on the area near the southeastern Armenian city of Kapan, killing one civilian. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry denied the Armenian allegations as “provocations”.
The Azerbaijani army, in turn, accused Armenia of launching missile attacks on Azerbaijan’s Tartar and Agdam territories and then attempting to attack the Agder-Tartar and Fizuli-Gabriel areas. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jehun Bayramov accused the “conditions for enforcing a humanitarian ceasefire” are currently missing “amid continued Armenian firing.”
The Armenian Defense Ministry denied any fighting violations by the Armenian army and said in the evening that despite Azerbaijan’s “provocation”, the ceasefire was “mostly seized”, to which the Armenian army responded.
The latest wave of fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces began on September 27 and killed hundreds of people in the largest conflict in decades since the conflict over Nagarno-Karabakh ended in 1994. The region is located in Azerbaijan but is under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.
The Associated Press contributes to this report.
