Tension rises between Armenia and Azerbaijan: helicopters and drones downed | Abroad

The Armenian Ministry of Defense said Armenian forces shot down two Azerbaijani helicopters and three drones in response to the attacks.

The Azerbaijani defense ministry, in turn, said it had launched a military operation along the “contact line,” a kind of no man’s land separating the Armenian-backed forces from the Azerbaijani forces in the region, Russian news agencies reported. Azerbaijan claims civilians were killed after Armenia fired at military positions and in some residential areas.

“The Armenians started large-scale provocations on Sunday morning and attacked civilian areas in Agdam, Fuzuli and Tartar districts near Nagorno-Karabakh,” the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense said in a statement posted on its website. The Azerbaijani military is taking “retaliatory measures” to protect the population, the statement said.

The two former Soviet countries have long been in conflict over the ethnic Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Border conflicts have flared up there again in recent months.

Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh declared their independence during a conflict that broke out when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Although a ceasefire was agreed in 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia regularly accuse each other of attacks around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the separate Azerbaijani-Armenian border.

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