- Baku says it is targeting ‘terrorists’ in Karabakh
- Says objective is to restore ‘constitutional order’
- Armenia condemns ‘full-scale aggression’ against region
- Azerbaijani strikes kill 25, injure 138 -Karabakh
- Shelling audible from Karabakh capital -social media
YEREVAN, Sept 20 (Reuters) – Ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh agreed to a Russian proposal for a ceasefire on Wednesday, 24 hours after Azerbaijan began an offensive to take control of the enclave that killed dozens and injured hundreds.
Separatist Armenian forces in Karabakh said Azerbaijan had broken through their lines and seized a number of heights and strategic road junctions while the world had stood by, doing nothing.
The self-styled “Republic of Artsakh” said that in such circumstances, it had no choice but to cease hostilities from 1 p.m. local time on Wednesday.
“The authorities of the Republic of Artsakh accept the proposal of the command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent to cease fire,” it said.
“With the mediation of the command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh, an agreement was reached on the complete cessation of hostilities from 13:00 on September 20, 2023.”
Azerbaijan confirmed that a ceasefire agreement had been reached. It said Russian peacekeepers relayed the Karabakh Armenian appeal for a ceasefire to Azerbaijan. It did not immediately set out the conditions.
Azerbaijan began its operation against Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday after some of its troops were killed in what Baku said were attacks from the mountainous region, which Azerbaijan had blockaded for nine months.
Baku had demanded that the separatist political authorities in Karabakh, which is recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan, also disband before any talks are held about the future of the region, which Azerbaijan wants to fully integrate.
Nagorno-Karabakh is recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan.
A former top official in Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian administration said on Wednesday that close to 100 people had been killed and hundreds more injured in the breakaway region after Azerbaijan started what he cast as a “big war”.
“This is a big war – Azerbaijan has started a full operation,” Ruben Vardanyan, former head of the breakaway region’s government, told Reuters from Karabakh. “This is basically a typical ethnical cleansing operation.”
“Already hundreds of people have been injured and close to 100 people have been killed,” he said. “Everyone is ignoring this: Russia is silent but so is the West.”
Azerbaijan rejects accusations that its aim is to ethnically cleanse Karabakh and says it will protect the rights of the area’s ethnic Armenian civilians under its own constitution.
It says it is determined however to remove the breakaway region’s political and military structures.
Threat of a new war
Azerbaijan sent troops backed by artillery strikes into Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday in an attempt to bring the breakaway region to heel by force, raising the threat of a new war with its neighbour Armenia.
Karabakh, a mountainous area in the volatile wider South Caucasus region, is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory. But part of it is run by separatist Armenian authorities who say the area is their ancestral homeland.
Karabakh has been at the centre of two wars – the latest in 2020 – since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Azerbaijan to halt its operation immediately, saying it was worsening an already dire humanitarian situation in Karabakh – a reference to a lengthy de facto blockade of the region by Baku.
The European Union, France and Germany also condemned Azerbaijan’s military action, calling on it to return to talks on the future of Karabakh with Armenia.
Stock photo courtesy of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan
