YEREVAN, KOMPAS.com – Team Armenia and Azerbaijan engaged in increasingly fierce fighting in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Armenian authorities say Azerbaijan launched a large-scale new offensive on Saturday (3/10/2020).
Baku and Yerevan have spent decades in heated conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian region in Azerbaijan that broke away from Baku in a 1990s war that claimed around 30,000 lives.
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The two sides oppose international calls for a ceasefire, and accuse each other of starting new clashes that have broken out since last Sunday. This battle was the biggest since the 1994 ceasefire.
Reported AFPOn Saturday, Armenian-backed separatist forces repelled a “massive Azerbaijan attack” and launched a counterattack, said Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Shushan Stepanyan.
“Fierce fighting is ongoing on the other side,” he wrote on Facebook.
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Karabakh separatist leader Arayik Harutyunyan said “final fighting” was ongoing with Azerbaijani troops.
“The nation and the homeland are under threat. The time has come for the whole nation to become a mighty army,” he told reporters before joining forces on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Karabakh military spokesman Suren Sarumyan explained that the Azerbaijan troops using the air force fleet, drone, and tanks get “heroic matches” from separatist fighters.
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Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry claims its forces have “seized a new foothold (in Karabakh) and cleared the territory of enemy forces.”
Nearly 200 people have been confirmed dead since fighting erupted on Sunday (27/09/2020), including more than 30 civilians.
There are fears that the fighting could become a full-scale multi-state war involving regional powers Turkey and Russia.
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