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Armenia denied the attack, but the Nagorno-Karabakh leader said it was targeting Ganja on Sunday.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs says one civilian was killed and four wounded in an Armenian rocket attack on the city of Ganja in Azerbaijan on Sunday.
Armenia denied attacking its neighbor.
The leader of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, said he had attacked Ganja.
In statements previously published on its website, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said that Ganja, a city of more than 330,000 inhabitants in the western part of the country, and several other civilian areas were being attacked with rockets and shelling.
Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Ganja, said: “People here tell us that about an hour after a rocket landed, a second hit another residential area a few blocks away, injuring two people.”
Earlier, Armenian officials said that Azerbaijani forces had bombed Stepanakert, the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh, where the sound of sirens was heard at approximately 9:30 am (05:30 GMT), followed by several explosions, according to the AFP news agency.
“Azerbaijani forces are shelling civilian targets in Stepanakert with rockets,” Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan told AFP.
The Azerbaijani authorities said they had taken “retaliatory measures” after the Stepanakert rocket fire.
Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Stepanakert, said the city has been under heavy bombardment since morning.
“There has been considerable damage to buildings in the city center,” he said. “People couldn’t go out. They are hiding in the bomb shelters. Civilians are on the receiving end of this bombardment. “
Separately, the Baku Defense Ministry said that the Armenian armed forces were firing rockets at the cities of Terter and Horadiz in the Fizuli region.
‘Final battle’
Nagorno-Karabakh is controlled by ethnic Armenians backed by Armenia and has been the subject of several United Nations resolutions calling for an end to the occupation of Azerbaijani lands.
The leader of the separatist province, Arayik Harutyunyan, said he was heading to the front and that the “final battle” for the region had begun, while Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his nation faced a historic threat.
“We are facing possibly the most decisive moment in our millennial history,” Pashinyan said in an address to the nation on Saturday. “We must all dedicate ourselves to a singular goal: victory.”
Azerbaijan and Armenia previously fought a war for Nagorno-Karabakh in the late 1980s and early 1990s while transitioning to independent countries amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The war, which ended with a fragile peace treaty in 1994, is estimated to have killed tens of thousands of people, including more than 1,000 civilians.
Armenia says it was Azerbaijan that reignited the conflict by launching a major offensive on September 27, while Baku says it was forced to respond to provocations from the other side.
The fighting continued despite international calls for neighbors to halt the fighting and begin talks as fears grow that the fighting would escalate into a multi-front war absorbing regional powers Turkey and Russia.
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