Azerbaijan vs armenia _ Azerbaijan soldiers attack on armenian country __ Azerbaijan_Armenian

On Monday, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of firing missiles into the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a disputed territory located in between the two countries, while Azerbaijan said several of its towns were attacked and its second-largest city, Ganja, was “under fire”.

In the past week, Nagorno-Karabakh has once again become the site of air and artillery attacks between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Clashes between the two countries erupted
on 27 September for the first time in almost 30 years after which Armenia declared martial law and ordered the total mobilisation of its military. It claimed to have shot down several Azerbaijani aircraft and tanks and accused its neighbour of attacking civilian settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional capital, Stepanakert. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan said it counter-attacked Armenian shelling. 

Both countries continue to point fingers at each other for violating ceasefire while clashes have so far killed an estimated 250 people, including many women and children.

The conflict prompted Iran, an immediate neighbour of both countries, to contemplate a peace plan.

The hostilities hold larger geopolitical implications as Turkey, under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is backing Azerbaijan and has been accused of sending in Syrian troops but Turkey has said it hasn’t offered anything other than “training, weapons sales and political support to Azerbaijan”. Meanwhile Russia, which enjoys good ties with both countries, has called for a ceasefire.

The last time clashes in the Nagorno-Karabakh region reached this scale was when Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which led to a full-fledged separatist war that killed nearly 30,000 people.

ThePrint explains the decades-old conflict and what it means for Russia and Turkey.