YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday accused each other of violating a new cease-fire in a bid to halt the fighting over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh that has killed hundreds of people, possibly thousands, in just four weeks.
The truce that took effect Monday morning was agreed upon Sunday after talks facilitated by the United States. It was a third attempt to establish a lasting cease-fire in the flare-up of a decades-old conflict, and — just like the previous two — it was immediately challenged by claims of violation from both sides.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry alleged that Armenian forces fired at Azerbaijani settlements and the positions of the Azerbaijani army “along the entire front, as well as on the Armenia-Azerbaijan state border.” Azerbaijan also accused Armenian forces of targeting its town of Terter and the Aghjabedi region.
Armenian military officials in turn accused Azerbaijani forces of shelling the northeastern area of Nagorno-Karabakh and other areas. By Monday afternoon, “heavy battles” were taking place in the southeast of the region, Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovannisian said.
Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh also charged that Azerbaijan “continued missile strikes” on the region’s civilian settlements, killing one person and wounding two.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan insisted they complied with the cease-fire and blamed each other for breaching it.
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Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. The latest fighting that began Sept. 27 has involved heavy artillery, rockets and drones, in the largest escalation of hostilities over the separatist region in more than a quarter-century.
Nagorno-Karabakh officials say 974 of their troops and more than 30 civilians have been killed in the clashes. Azerbaijani authorities haven’t disclosed their military losses but say the fighting has killed 65 civilians and wounded 300.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that according to Moscow’s information, the death toll from the fighting was nearing 5,000, significantly higher than what both sides report.
The new cease-fire deal came out of “intensive negotiations” that Washington facilitated over the weekend among the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan and co-chairs of the Minsk Group, set up by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the 1990s to mediate the conflict.
The co-chairs of the group Sunday announced another meeting with the two foreign ministers in Geneva on Thursday “to discuss, reach agreement on, and begin implementation … of all steps necessary to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”
Information for this article was contributed by Daria Litvinova and Aida Sultanova of The Associated Press.
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