Azerbaijan launched a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, which authorities in Baku said was necessary to restore constitutional order and drive Armenian armed groups out of the predominantly Armenian enclave. Casualties and injuries are reported.
Azerbaijan launched a military operation to capture Nagorno-Karabakh today after several months of tension with Armenia. The aim of the operation is said to be the withdrawal of the Armenian army from the region, as stipulated in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement. Hours before the start of the operation, Azerbaijan announced that six Azerbaijanis had been killed in mine explosions in the area, blaming Armenian separatists. .
In the Azerbaijani operation, according to separatist authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh, two civilians were killed and 23 were wounded. “The number of wounded civilians rose to 23, we also recorded two deaths among civilians,” the representative of the authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh, responsible for human rights, announced on social media.
An adviser to the Azerbaijani president, Hikmet Hadjiyev, said they were close to fulfilling the main objectives of the operation, neutralizing some military targets.
The Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan announced that it is an anti-terrorist operation of a local character to establish constitutional order in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the ministry, the complete withdrawal of Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and the dissolution of the separatist regime in the region is the only way to achieve peace and stability in the region.
The ministry claimed that they were only shelling military targets. As they added, as part of the operation, they use very precise weapons on the front line and inside. They also announced that Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh are systematically shelling Azerbaijani positions and constantly planting mines on Azerbaijani territory. Armenia, however, was accused of amassing an army.
According to the Defense Ministry in Baku, after the start of the operation, Azerbaijan established humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of the population from the threatened area. Azerbaijan also emphasized that it has repeatedly warned of violations of the ceasefire, which ended the war between the two neighbors in 2020 with the intervention of Russia, and called them a serious source of threat to peace and stability in the region.
Armenia accuses its neighbor of ethnic cleansing
The current leadership of Nagorno-Karabakh rejected Baku’s accusations and, as the Ministry of Defense there stated in a press release, the defense forces respected the ceasefire. They called the allegations of ceasefire violations false.
Armenia denies that it has its own army in Nagorno-Karabakh, which the Ministry of Defense in Yerevan emphasized today.
Today, Armenia also accused Azerbaijan of trying to carry out ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. “On September 19, Azerbaijan launched another large-scale aggression against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to complete its policy of ethnic cleansing,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry announced.
According to Yerevan, Russian peacekeeping forces in Nagorno-Karabakh are responsible for stopping the Azerbaijani operation. The Armenian Foreign Ministry referred to the 2020 ceasefire agreement.
At the same time, Armenia called on the UN Security Council and Russia to take action to stop the Azerbaijani operation. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Council due to the worsening of the situation.
Pashinyan accused the Azerbaijani forces of trying to capture populated centers in the enclave, while expressing his expectation that members of the Russian peacekeeping forces would stabilize the situation.
Moscow is calling for an end to the bloodshed
Today, Russia called on Azerbaijan and Armenia to end the bloodshed and resume peace talks. As the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, pointed out, all the steps for a peaceful resolution of the conflict are defined in the agreements that the two sides concluded between 2020 and 2022 with the intervention of Moscow.
She also rejected media reports that Russia was informed about the Azerbaijani operation long before its start. She emphasized that the Russian contingent received information about this a few minutes before the start of the operation.
Frozen Conflict
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been in dispute over the region for decades, and have fought two wars over control of the territory. About 6,500 people died in six weeks of fighting in 2020, after which the warring parties reached a peace deal sponsored by Moscow.
Russia then sent its own peacekeepers to the area, whose work Armenian authorities have repeatedly criticized as failing to protect ethnic Armenians and called for the intervention of multinational peacekeepers. Since then, with the help of Moscow, Brussels and Washington, the countries have been looking for a permanent solution to the dispute.
Source: Rtvslo
