Azerbaijani President Aliyev vows to avenge fallen soldiers

AZERBAIJANI President Ilham Aliyev released a statement yesterday amid the attacks, saying that Azerbaijan will avenge its fallen soldiers. “We have destroyed vehicles belonging to the Armenian military,” he said. In a televised address to the nation, Aliyev vowed victory over Armenian forces. “Our cause is just, and we will win,” Aliyev said, repeating a famous quote from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s address at the outbreak of war with Nazi Germany. “Azerbaijani army is fighting on its territory,” he said. “Karabakh is our ours, Karabakh is Azerbaijan,” he said, in reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is currently under illegal Armenian occupation. “This morning, our civilians and military positions were attacked from multiple directions,” Aliyev added, saying that heavy artillery was used by Armenia’s armed forces. “As a result of the enemy’s attacks, we have suffered both civilian and military casualties. May God grant mercy on the fallen. They will be avenged,” he said. “The Azerbaijani military is now firing back at the enemy’s military positions. Much of their military equipment has been destroyed,” Aliyev added. “This attack is another manifestation of Armenian fascism,” he said. The Azerbaijani ministry previously said that one of its helicopters had been downed but that its crew had survived.

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LATER, Yerevan claimed it had shot down helicopters and combat drones and had hit three Azerbaijani tanks.

“The entire responsibility for this lies with the military-political leadership of Azerbaijan,” said a spokesperson for Armenia’s Defense Ministry.

Meanwhile, authorities in Armenia-occupied Karabakh also said that 16 servicemen have been killed and more than 100 wounded in clashes with Azerbaijan’s soldiers.

Azerbaijan denies it provoked the fighting and claimed it was conducting a counter-offensive on the front line following an Armenian provocation. Hikmet Hajiyev, an aide to Aliyev, released a statement later in the day, condemning Armenian aggression. “The bombardment of densely populated civilian areas and installations situated along the frontline by Armenia’s armed forces has been deliberate and targeted. There are reports of dead and wounded among civilians and military servicemen. Extensive damage has been inflicted on many homes and civilian infrastructure,” he said on Twitter.

“Armenia’s deliberate targeting of residential areas and the civilians is a gross violation of the international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention of 1949. Targeting the civilian population is a tactic incorporated in the combat training of Armenia’s armed forces, and the Khojaly genocide perpetrated in February 1992 has been a vivid testimony to that,” Hajiyev added.

“According to the international law, Armenian armed forces’ strikes against the positions of Azerbaijan’s army, against the civilians and civilian infrastructure, with the use of large-caliber weapons, are Armenia’s yet another military aggression and an act of the use of force against Azerbaijan,” the aide said.

Hajiyev also added that Azerbaijan is taking necessary measures to counter Armenian aggression.

“Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that Armenia’s ongoing military aggression against Azerbaijan and the presence of the armed forces of Armenia in Azerbaijan’s occupied territories have remained a significant threat to regional peace and security,” he said.

The aide concluded by saying that Armenia

“resorted to another military adventure and a provocation” even though the world is battling the coronavirus pandemic and the country has demonstrated “a flagrant disregard for the international law, U.N. Charter and the international community.”

“The responsibility for the present situation and future developments lie squarely with Armenia’s political-military leadership,” he said.

As the clashes continue, the Azerbaijani military has captured six villages near the towns of Cebrayil and Fuzuli that were previously under Armenian occupation.

According to a statement by Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense, the country’s military forces have liberated the villages from illegal occupation by Armenian armed forces.

The two former Soviet countries have long been in conflict over the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is under illegal Armenian occupation, and border clashes have intensified in recent months.

In July, Armenian cease-fire violations killed 12 Azerbaijani troops and wounded four others.

Multiple U.N. resolutions demand the withdrawal of Armenian occupation forces.

Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence during a conflict that broke out as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Though a cease-fire was agreed upon in 1994, Baku and Yerevan frequently accuse each other of attacks around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the separate Azerbaijani-Armenian frontier.