Sun 04 October 2020:
Azerbaijan said on Sunday that Armenian armed forces had shelled its second city of Ganja in a major new escalation of the conflict in the South Caucasus.
Armenia denied that it fired towards Azerbaijan, but the leader of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, said his forces had destroyed a military airbase located in Ganja.
Azerbaijan’s president announced on Saturday Azerbaijani soldiers hoisted the flag over the town of Madagiz, once occupied by Armenia.
“Today #Azerbaijan’s Army hoisted our flag over Madagiz. #Madagiz is ours. #Karabakh is #Azerbaijan!” Ilham Aliyev said on Twitter.
Aliyev added that he had reinstated the town’s historical name, Sugovushan, as of Saturday.
“Permanent military units located in the large cities of Azerbaijan from now on become the targets of the defence army,” said Karabakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan.
The #Azerbaijan #Army is taking punitive measures against the armed forces of #Armenia.#KarabakhisAzerbaijan #StopArmenianOccupation #LongLiveAzerbaijan#LongLiveAzerbaijanArmy#StopArmenianAgression pic.twitter.com/4xxvppEonf
— Karabakh is Azerbaijan (@Karabakh_isAZE) October 4, 2020
The Azeri defence ministry said the cities of Terter and Horadiz near the de-facto border with Nagorno-Karabakh were under heavy shelling, while the breakaway region’s military said its capital, Stepanakert, was under bombardment.
Armenia said on Saturday it would use “all necessary means” to protect ethnic Armenians from attack by Azerbaijan, which said its forces were gaining ground in fighting over the mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ignoring a French attempt to mediate, the opposing sides pounded each other with rockets and missiles for a seventh day in the newest flare-up of a decades-old conflict that threatens to draw in Russia and Turkey.
While Russia, the United States and France have called for an end to hostilities, Turkey has said Armenian “occupiers” must withdraw and rejected “superficial” demands for a ceasefire.
Regional and military analysts say the Azeris lack the firepower to overrun Karabakh completely but may settle for territorial gains that will enable them to declare a victory and gain leverage in future negotiations.
Azerbaijan saying in a statement on Saturday that ethnic Armenians from Syria, Lebanon, Russia, Georgia, Greece and the United Arab Emirates had been deployed or were on their way to operate as “foreign terrorist fighters” on the ethnic Armenian side.
Upper Karabakh conflict
Relations between the two former Soviet nations have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Upper Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.
Four UN Security Council and two UN General Assembly resolutions, as well as many international organizations, demand the withdrawal of the occupying forces.
The OSCE Minsk Group — co-chaired by France, Russia and the US — was formed in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, but to no avail. A cease-fire, however, was agreed upon in 1994.
France, Russia and NATO, among others, have urged an immediate halt to clashes in the occupied region.
