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Azerbaijan said Tuesday it had launched “anti-terrorist operations” in Nagorno-Karabakh, almost three years after it went to war over the disputed mountainous region with Armenia.
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“Anti-terrorist operations in the region of a local character have begun,” Baku’s defence ministry said, adding it was using “high-precision weapons on the front line and in depth” as part of the operations.
Blasts were heard Tuesday in the Armenian separatist stronghold of Stepanakert in the region.
Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said Tuesday it had opened humanitarian routes for non-combatants in the breakaway region and demanded the “complete withdrawal” of Armenian forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh region as a condition for peace.
“The only way to achieve peace and stability in the region is the unconditional and complete withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and the dissolution of the so-called (Armenian separatist) regime,” Baku’s defence ministry said in a statement.
Armenia on denied that its troops were present in Nagorno-Karabakh. “The Armenian defence ministry has repeatedly stated, and states again, that the Republic of Armenia has no army in Nagorno-Karabakh,” its defence ministry said.
The ex-Soviet neighbours have been locked in a decades-long dispute over the mountainous region, going to war twice in the 1990s and in 2020.
Fears of a fresh war have escalated in recent months with Armenia accusing Azerbaijan of a troop build-up and decrying a blockade of its only land link to Armenian-majority Karabakh.
Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but largely populated by ethnic Armenians.
Heavily mined
Escalated tensions come after four Azerbaijani police officers and two civilians were killed in mine blasts in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region…
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