Lhe battles are raging between Armenia and Azerbaijan. At least 49 Armenian soldiers have been killed in border clashes with Azerbaijan, the deadliest since a war between the two Caucasian countries in 2020, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced on Tuesday (September 13th). “Right now we have 49 [militaires] you are […] and unfortunately this is not the final number,” Nikol Pashinian said during a speech to parliament in Yerevan.
The Armenian Prime Minister also held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and the head of the American diplomacy Antony Blinken to ask them to react to the “aggression” of Azerbaijan, announced Yerevan , Tuesday, September 13. During these separate talks, Nikol Pashinyan said he hoped for “an appropriate response from the international community” as clashes are underway on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, according to Armenian government statements.
This is the heaviest toll communicated by Yerevan since the month-and-a-half war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the fall of 2020 for control of the mountainous Nagorny Karabakh region. Azerbaijan, for its part, conceded “losses” during these clashes which broke out overnight, without specifying the exact number at this stage. “The fighting continues in one or two directions,” Nikol Pashinian told parliament, but “the intensity of hostilities has decreased” in the morning, according to him.
Major clashes at the border
Baku’s forces, backed by artillery and drones, are seeking to “advance” into Armenian territory, Yerevan said. “Battles” are being fought at certain points on the border and “the enemy is constantly trying to advance,” the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “Azerbaijani forces continue to use artillery, mortars, drones and large-caliber rifles,” he added.
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Frequent shootings have been reported along their shared border since the end of the 2020 war between Yerevan and Baku over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. “On Tuesday at 00:05 (22:05 French time), Azerbaijan launched an intensive bombardment, with artillery and large-caliber firearms, against Armenian military positions in the direction of the towns of Goris, Sotk and Jermuk,” the Armenian Defense Ministry said again.
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For its part, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry accused Armenia of “large-scale subversive acts” near the border districts of Dashkesan, Kelbajar and Lachin, adding that its army positions “came under fire, including trench mortars. “There are losses among the (Azerbaijani) military,” he said, without giving figures.
6,500 dead in fall 2020
The United States, which said it was “extremely concerned” about the reported attacks, urged an immediate cessation of fighting on Monday. Moscow and Yerevan meanwhile pledged to take steps to “stabilize the situation” on the border, the Armenian Defense Ministry said. During a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu, Suren Papikian “presented the situation resulting from the large-scale aggression of Azerbaijan”. The two men “agreed to take the necessary measures to stabilize the situation”, he added.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu on Tuesday called on Armenia to “stop its provocations” against Azerbaijan, after the resumption of heavy fighting on the border between the two countries. “Armenia should stop its provocations and focus on peace negotiations and cooperation” with Baku, the minister said in a message posted on Twitter.
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Last week, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing one of its soldiers in a border shootout. In August, Baku said it lost one soldier, and the Karabakh army said two of its soldiers were killed and more than a dozen injured. The neighbors fought two wars – in the 1990s and in 2020 – in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani enclave populated by Armenians. Six weeks of fighting in the fall of 2020 left more than 6,500 dead and ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire. As part of the deal, Armenia ceded swaths of territory it had controlled for decades and Moscow deployed some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.
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During EU-mediated talks in Brussels in May and April, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to “advance the talks” on a future peace treaty. Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflict claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.