Fierce fighting eases after cease-fire between Armenia and Azerbaijan
GORIS, ARMENIA
Fierce fighting over a breakaway Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan partly subsided Saturday after a cease-fire took effect. But there was little expectation of a durable peace two weeks into the most violent conflict that the volatile region has seen in decades.
The cease-fire agreement, reached by Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow early Saturday after 10 hours of overnight talks, raised hopes of at least a brief respite in the artillery bombardment, drone strikes and trench warfare that have killed hundreds since Azerbaijan launched an offensive on Sept. 27.
Each side accused the other of mounting new attacks after the cease-fire took effect at noon Saturday. But eyewitnesses reported less shelling in the enclave’s capital, Stepanakert, in the afternoon and evening. The Armenian Defense Ministry said most of the front line was “relatively calm.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it stood ready to use the lull to retrieve the remains of the dead at the front line, where the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh borders Azerbaijani-controlled territory. Emergency services workers fanned out looking for unexploded ordnance, a journalist based in the city, Gegham Baghdasaryan, said in a telephone interview.
Nagorno-Karabakh, with a population of about 150,000, is a landlocked territory in the Caucasus, the mountain range where Europe meets Asia, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The territory, smaller than Connecticut, has little geostrategic significance on its own, but is the subject of an escalating test of strength among regional powers.
Russia, Iran and an increasingly assertive Turkey have all been jockeying for influence in the region.
The enclave is part of Azerbaijan under international law, but has been controlled by a breakaway government closely aligned with Armenia since a yearslong war over the territory in the early 1990s. About 20,000 people were killed, and about 1 million, mostly Azerbaijanis, were displaced in that war.
Azerbaijan says it is now fighting to reclaim land that rightfully belongs to the country, while Armenia says ceding the land to Azerbaijan could bring about the destruction of the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Neither side appears in a mood to compromise. The current war has already killed more than 400 Armenian soldiers and, according to the United Nations, more than 50 civilians.