Armenia, Azerbaijan exchange rocket fire

STEPANAKERT: Armenian and Azerbaijani forces exchanged rocket fire as fighting intensified over Nagorno-karabakh on Sunday, with the breakaway region’s capital and Azerbaijan’s second-largest city bombarded.

Armenia said that Nagorno-karabakh’s main city Stepanakert, which has been under artillery fire since Friday, was hit again on Sunday and journalists said there were regular explosions and clouds of black smoke rising in parts of the city.

Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said Ganja, a city of more than 330,000 in western Azerbaijan, was also “under fire,” while Armenian-backed separatist forces claimed to have destroyed an airbase there.

Sirens were sounding and explosions were heard at regular intervals in Stepanakert, where residents were taking shelter including several families in the basement of a church.

Armenia’s foreign ministry said Stepanakert and the Karabakh town of Martakert were under rocket atack and accused Azerbaijani forces of “the deliberate targeting of the civilian population.” It said the Azerbaijani air force was also involved. Drones could be heard flying over Stepanakert.

Azerbaijan said Ganja was under fire, including from areas outside of Karabakh.

“Armenian forces struck Ganja with rockets from Armenian territory,” said Hikmet Hajiyev, an advisor to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

He said Armenian forces had also used heavy artillery and rockets against the towns of Terter and Goradiz in Azerbaijan.

Karabakh’s separatist forces said they had targeted and destroyed an airbase in Ganja, but Baku denied this as a “provocation” and said civilian infrastructure and housing had been hit.

Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey accused Armenia of “targeting civilians” in Ganja and reiterated support for its fellow Turkic and Muslim country as “one nation, two states.” Karabakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan warned that it would now consider “military facilities in Azerbaijan’s big cities” as legitimate targets.

“I call on the residents of these cities to immediately leave,” Harutyunyan said in a post on Facebook.

Harutyunyan announced on Saturday that he was heading to the front to join the fighting.

Azerbaijani officials claimed on Sunday that he had been “seriously wounded” while in a bunker hit by bombing, but his office denied this.

Azerbaijan on Sunday said two more civilians had been killed in shelling on the southern town of Beylagan, where a journalist working with AFP saw residents picking through the rubble of destroyed homes.