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Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of violating humanitarian truce
STEPANAKERT, Azerbaijan, Oct 18, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Armenia on Sunday
accused Azerbaijan of violating a fresh humanitarian truce aimed at
halting weeks of fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region that has
claimed hundreds of lives.
Yerevan’s defence ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan said on
Twitter that Azerbaijan had fired artillery shells and rockets in the
early hours of Sunday, just minutes after the ceasefire went into
effect from midnight (2000 GMT).
There was no immediate reaction from Azerbaijan.
Saturday’s ceasefire followed a major escalation that saw a missile
strike kill 13 people including small children in the Azerbaijani city
of Ganja, for which President Ilham Aliyev vowed to take “revenge”.
A previous truce brokered by Russia to allow the warring sides to
exchange prisoners and bodies and begin “substantive” talks quickly
broke down, with both sides accused each other of violations.
Azerbaijan and the Armenian separatists who control its Karabakh
region have been locked in a bitter impasse over the fate of the
mountainous province since a war in the 1990s that left 30,000 people
dead.
Clashes erupted again three weeks ago and have killed at least 700
people, threatened to draw in regional powers Russia and Turkey, and
raised alarm over the failure of a decades-long international
mediation.
The real death toll is probably much higher since Azerbaijan has not
published fatalities among its soldiers.
With neither side making decisive gains — and a smokescreen of
claims and counter-claims of victory blurring events on the frontline
— there is no telling when the fighting will end.
– ‘Revenge’ –
The latest ceasefire came after Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev
vowed to take revenge on Armenia after a missile strike killed 13
people including small children in the city of Ganja.
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The early hours attack, which also saw a strike on the nearby
strategic city of Mingecevir, came hours after Azerbaijani forces
shelled Stepanakert, the capital of the ethnic Armenian separatist
region.
The explosions in Ganja levelled a row of houses and left more than
45 people injured in an attack Aliyev described as “a war crime”.
He said his army would “take revenge on the battlefield” and
promised to capture Karabakh by driving out Armenian forces “like
dogs”.
Prosecutors said that as the result of the attack on Ganjia 13
people died including small children.
An AFP team in Ganja saw rows of houses turned to rubble by the
strike, which shattered walls and ripped roofs off buildings in the
surrounding streets.
“We were sleeping and suddenly we heard the blast. The door, glass,
everything shattered over us,” said Durdana Mammadova, 69, who was
standing on the street at daybreak because her house was destroyed.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s military said for its part that Azerbaijani
forces had stepped up their attacks on Friday across the front,
shelling Stepanakert and a nearby town.
On Saturday, Karabakh separatist leader Arayik Harutyunyan had said
before the truce took effect that “intensive fighting” continued
“along the entire line of defence”.
– EU deplores strikes –
The EU on Saturday condemned the strikes on Ganja and said the
original ceasefire deal “must be fully respected without delay”.
“All targeting of civilians and civilian installations by either
party must stop,” said a spokesperson for EU foreign affairs chief
Josep Borrell.
Turkey, a staunch ally of Azerbaijan and widely accused of supplying
mercenaries to bolster Baku’s forces, said the strikes were a war
crime and called on the international community to denounce them.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region of Azerbaijan mainly inhabited
by ethnic Armenians and backed by Yerevan, has been the scene of
deadly clashes since September 27.
It has remained under separatist Armenian control since a 1994
ceasefire ended the post-Soviet conflict.
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