Karabakh: Azerbaijan on Tuesday launched a military operation in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region and demanded the total withdrawal of Armenian forces from the disputed mountainous territory as a precondition for peace.
Fears of a fresh war have been building in recent months, with Armenia accusing Azerbaijan of a troop build-up and decrying a blockade of its only land link to Nagorno-Karabakh.
An AFP journalist in the separatist stronghold of Stepanakert said blasts could be heard in the town as Azerbaijan said it was using “high precision weapons on the front line and in-depth”.
Localised anti-terrorist measures have been launched in the region,” Baku’s defence ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said it had opened “humanitarian corridors and reception points” to allow civilians to leave.
“We reiterate that the civilian population and civilian infrastructure are not targets,” the statement said.
The latest escalation comes nearly three years after a brief but brutal war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the mountainous region.
The ex-Soviet Caucasus rivals have been locked in a decades-long dispute over Karabakh with large-scale hostilities breaking out in the 1990s and in 2020.
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