2023-09-19 18:52:07
The capital of Nagorno Karabakh is subject to “intensive shooting”. The fighting carried out as part of the military operation launched Tuesday morning by Azerbaijan has already left five people dead and 80 injured, according to a latest report released at the end of the afternoon. Update on events.
What happened ?
Azerbaijan launched an “anti-terrorist” military operation in Nagorno Karabakh on Tuesday morning, three years after the previous war, demanding the “total and unconditional” withdrawal of its Armenian adversary from this region disputed for decades with Armenia. The fighting in Nagorno Karabakh left at least 5 dead and 80 injured, including 15 civilians, according to a new report published Tuesday by the Armenian separatist authorities.
Armenian separatists claim that several towns in Nagorno Karabakh, including the capital Stepanakert, are targeted by “intensive shooting”, which also targets civilian infrastructure. The Azerbaijani army is trying to advance “deep” into Karabakh, they said. The situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is currently “stable”, however, clarified Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
The latter also denounced calls for a “coup d’état” in Armenia, while television reported hundreds of demonstrators massed in front of the government headquarters in Yerevan. The Armenian opposition has tried several times for three years to obtain his departure, accusing him of being responsible for the Armenian military defeat during the fall 2020 war in Nagorno Karabakh.
What is Armenia accused of?
Baku justified its operation by the death of four police officers and two Azerbaijani civilians in the explosion of mines on the site of a tunnel under construction between Shusha and Fizouli, two towns in Nagorno Karabakh under Azerbaijan control. The region is one of the most mined in the former USSR, but Azerbaijani security services claim that a group of Armenian separatist “saboteurs” laid these mines, committing an act of “terrorism”.
At the same time, Baku accused the Armenian army of having injured two Azerbaijani soldiers during mortar and small arms fire in the northeast of Karabakh, and of having fired at night with small arms towards positions of Azerbaijan in the Gadabay district, on the border between the two countries. She also accuses Armenian separatists of having targeted the GPS system of an Azerbaijani airliner via radio interference.
Azerbaijani diplomacy warned that “the only way to achieve peace and stability” was “the unconditional and total withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces” from the territory and “the dissolution of the so-called separatist regime”. The Armenian Ministry of Defense assured him “that Armenia did not (have) an army in Nagorno Karabakh”, therefore implying that its separatist allies were facing the opposing army alone. Comments to which Nikol Pashinian echoed a little later, accusing Baku of wanting to “drag Armenia into hostilities”.
What is Karabakh?
Nagorno Karabakh is at the center of a long conflict between the two countries which fought two wars for this enclave in the Caucasus with an Armenian majority but recognized as part of Azerbaijan. It has changed hands many times over the centuries.
New fighting broke out on Tuesday in Nagorno-Karabakh.
After the departure of the Soviet army from the region, following the dislocation of the USSR in 1991, an escalation of violence led to a first open war. Some 30,000 people died there, until a ceasefire negotiated by Russia in 1994. A new conflict broke out in the fall of 2020, killing 6,500 people in six weeks. The war ended in a crushing defeat for Armenia, forced to cede significant territories around and inside the enclave to Azerbaijan.
Although it has its own institutions and government, Nagorno Karabakh is today supported politically, economically and militarily by Armenia. Tensions resumed in July 2022, when Azerbaijan set up checkpoints before blocking traffic in the Lachin Corridor, the only route linking Nagorno Karabakh to Armenia, leading to severe shortages of food and medicine in the region. ‘enclave.
What reactions?
Armenia denounced a “large-scale aggression” for the purposes of “ethnic cleansing”. She also ruled that Russia, guarantor of the ceasefire negotiated at the end of the last conflict in 2020, must “stop Azerbaijani aggression”. “Concerned”, the Kremlin said through its spokesperson that it was trying to convince Armenia and Azerbaijan to return “to the negotiating table”.
France, for its part, requested “the emergency convening of a meeting of the United Nations Security Council”, condemning the military operation, while Emmanuel Macron spoke with the Armenian Prime Minister. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would contact both sides. The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, who has led mediation in the past between the two countries, judged that Azerbaijan must “immediately” cease its operation.
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