Friday night fighting in Karbakh

Azerbaijan and Armenia traded fire across the Line of Contact on Friday night and Saturday morning, though no casualties have been reported at this stage.

There has been sporadic fighting each night since April 5, when four days of fierce violence, killing dozens, came to an end after a Russia-brokered ceasefire. 

In the past 24 hours Armenia breached a ceasefire agreement 122 times, said the Azerbaijan defence ministry, which said it fired 123 shots in retaliation.

Over the past couple of days, Azerbaijan’s military vehicles have been “relocated via predetermined routes for the purpose of raising troops’ morale” according to the APA.az news agency.

While Azerbaijan said it was Armenia which broke the verbal ceasefire agreement, Armenia is saying the opposite. Similar accusations have been taking place each night in the past month.

“Azerbaijan continued violating the ceasefire agreement, and fired various caliber weapons and 82mm mortars. The Defence Army forces exercised restraint and conducted response actions only in case of strict necessity,” the military of the self-declared Nagorno-Karbakh Republic said in a statememt.

The fighting at the beginning of last month was the worst for two decades.

SOURCE: commonspace.eu and agencies

PHOTO: from APA.az

Related articles

Popular

Editor's choice
Interview
Thursday Interview: Murad Muradov

Thursday Interview: Murad Muradov

Today, commonspace.eu starts a new regular weekly series. THURSDAY INTERVIEW, conducted by Lauri Nikulainen, will host  persons who are thinkers, opinion shapers, and implementors in their countries and spheres. We start the series with an interview with Murad Muradov, a leading person in Azerbaijan's think tank community. He is also the first co-chair of the Action Committee for a new Armenian-Azerbaijani Dialogue. Last September he made history by being the first Azerbaijani civil society activist to visit Armenia after the 44 day war, and the start of the peace process. Speaking about this visit Murad Muradov said: "My experience was largely positive. My negative expectations luckily didn’t play out. The discussions were respectful, the panel format bringing together experts from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey was particularly valuable during the NATO Rose-Roth Seminar in Yerevan, and media coverage, while varied in tone, remained largely constructive. Some media outlets though attempted to represent me as more of a government mouthpiece than an independent expert, which was totally misleading.  Overall, I see these initiatives as important steps in rebuilding trust and normalising professional engagement. The fact that soon a larger Azerbaijani civil society visits to Armenia followed, reinforces the sense that this process is moving in the right direction." (click the image to read the interview in full)