The Azerbaijani army has occupied nine more villages in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Friday, while Armenia reports that peace talks have begun in Geneva.
“I love the Azerbaijani army! Karabakh is Azerbaijan, ”Aliyev wrote on Twitter.
At the same time, the Armenian Foreign Ministry announced that a meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani top diplomats had begun in Geneva through the OSCE.
Previous ceasefire agreements reached in recent weeks with the support of Russia and the United States have failed.
Intense fighting resumed in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on September 27.
In the escalation of the conflict, the bloodiest since the 1994 ceasefire, at least 1,252 people have lost their lives on both sides.
More than 130 civilians have been killed and thousands have been forced to flee their homes.
Azerbaijani forces are reportedly being assisted by Turkish armed forces officers and Turkish-organized Syrian militants.
Baku rejects any solution that would allow Armenians to retain control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
There have been hostile relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia since the 1990s, when there was a war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian population.
Nagorno-Karabakh, which was part of the Azerbaijani SSR during the Soviet era, has been a “de facto” independent Armenian republic since the early 1990s. Although Azerbaijan has not controlled Nagorno-Karabakh since the collapse of the USSR, it considers the Armenian region to be its territory. Nagorno-Karabakh is also considered by the international community to be part of Azerbaijan, and no country has recognized the region as an independent state.
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