CEASEFIRE SHORT-LIVED
Armenia-Azerbaijan truce collapses within hours
YEREVAN/BAKU — Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Sunday of violating a new humanitarian ceasefire in fighting over the mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, hours after it was agreed.
The truce agreed on Saturday came into force at midnight (2000 GMT) after a weekold Russian-brokered ceasefire failed to halt the worst fighting in the South Caucasus since the 1990s. At least 750 people have been killed since fighting began on Sept. 27.
At 1010 GMT, the Azeri defence ministry said the Aghdam
region, adjacent Nagorno-Karabakh, was under Armenian shelling. It said overnight Armenian military units opened fire from large-caliber weapons along the border, which Armenia denied.
Armenia said the Azeri army had fired twice during the night and used artillery and accused Baku of rejecting its request to withdraw the wounded soldiers from the battlefield.
“This step ... was categorically rejected by Baku,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. Baku called the statement misinformation.
The Azeri defence ministry said: “The enemy fired at the vicinity of the Jabrail city, as well as the villages of this region ... using mortars and artillery.” It added that the Azeri army “took adequate retaliatory measures.”
The ministry said that Azeri military units downed an Armenian Su-25 warplane, “which was attempting to inflict airstrikes on the positions of the Azeri army in Jabrail region.” Yerevan swiftly denied that.
Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh said Azeri forces had launched an attack on the enclave's military positions and there were casualties and wounded on both sides.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountain territory that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated and governed by ethnic Armenians.