Threat to use ‘all necessary means’ in war
YEREVAN/BAKU: Armenia said on Saturday (local time) it would use ‘‘all necessary means’’ to protect ethnic Armenians from attack by Azerbaijan, which said its forces had captured a string of villages in fighting over the mountain enclave of NagornoKarabakh.
Ignoring a French attempt to mediate, the opposing sides pounded each other with rockets and missiles for a seventh day in the newest flareup of a decadesold conflict.
The death toll rose to at least 230 in the fighting over NagornoKarabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside
Azerbaijan that broke away from its control in the 1990s.
Each side said it had destroyed hundreds of the other’s tanks. The Azeri side claimed gains, and President Ilham Aliyev sent congratulations to a military commander on the capture of a Karabakh village.
‘‘Today the Azeri army raised the flag of Azerbaijan in Madagiz. Madagiz is ours,’’ he declared on social media.
He later announced the capture of seven more villages.
It was not possible to independently verify the situation on the ground.
Armenian Defence Ministry official Artsrun Hovhannisyan said the situation was changing frequently.
‘‘In such a large war such changes are natural. We can take a position, then leave it in an hour,’’ he told reporters.
Armenia’s armed forces have so far held back from entering the war alongside those of NagornoKarabakh. But the Foreign Ministry said Armenia would take ‘‘all the necessary means and steps’’ to prevent what it called ‘‘mass atrocities’’ by the forces of Azerbaijan and its ally, Turkey.
A ministry spokeswoman declined to comment on what steps this could entail. — Reuters