Nagorno-Karabakh clashes threaten war
YEREVAN, ARMENIA // Fighting raged around Nagorno-Karabakh yesterday as the Armenian president warned that the hostilities could slide into a fullscale war.
Azerbaijan said it lost three of its troops in the separatist region while inflicting heavy casualties on Armenian forces.
The Azerbaijani defence ministry said Armenian forces continued shelling Azerbaijani military positions and frontline villages despite a ceasefire that Azerbaijan unilaterally declared on Sunday.
The ministry said that up to 170 Armenian troops had been “neutralised” and 12 Armenian armoured vehicles destroyed yesterday. Armenian defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovannisian dismissed the claim as a product of the Azerbaijani military’s “wild imagination”.
The warring parties have put enemy losses in the hundreds, claims which could not be independently verified and were promptly denied by the opposing side.
The hostilities that erupted on Saturday is the worst since a war that ended in 1994, leaving Nagorno-Karabakh under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military. Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside Karabakh proper.
International efforts to settle the conflict, fueled by simmering tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris, have brought no results.
The Karabakh military said yesterday that 20 of its servicemen had been killed since Saturday, another 72 wounded and seven of its tanks destroyed.
Azerbaijan said earlier that 12 of its soldiers were killed on Saturday when fighting flared up.
Mr Ovannisian said yesterday that Karabakh militia advanced overnight, “liberating new posi- tions”. He also claimed that Armenian artillery hit Azerbaijani units as they were moving to the front line.
Self- proclaimed officials in Karabakh said fighting intensified in the morning in the southeast and north- east with the Azerbaijani troops using Grad multiple rocket launchers.
Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry blamed Armenian forces for shelling residential areas despite a unilateral ceasefire announced by Baku, warning that “Armenia will bear the blame for possible counterattacks and retaliatory measures by Azerbaijan’s armed forces”.
Azerbaijan’s defence minister said that his forces would open up an artillery barrage on Stepanakert, the main city in Karabakh, if Armenian forces did not stop shelling populated areas.
Yesterday, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan said that his country could formalise its ties with Karabakh by officially recognising its independence should the fighting escalate.
He warned that the escalation of hostilities could lead to a “large-scale war”. “It will affect security and stability not only in South Caucasus, but Europe as well,” Mr Sargsyan said.
Armenian president warns that the hostilities may slide into a full-scale war