Expectations of a ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on Sunday continue to wane, with the parties accusing each other of intense firing on civilian territories and escalating the two-week-long clashes.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said Armenian forces had fired on the city of Gangge on Sunday night, killing at least seven people and injuring 33, including children. A Gendze journalist from the AFP news agency reported that rescuers were digging people out of the ruins, but a local said that a whole block of two-story houses had been destroyed at night.
Meanwhile, the Nagorno-Karabakh Ministry of Defense has described the accusations in Baku as an “absolute lie” and said Armenian forces were abiding by a ceasefire agreement reached on Saturday night after several hours of talks between Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian foreign ministers in Moscow . At the same time, it has accused Azerbaijan of shooting down residential areas.
An AFP journalist from Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, who has been heavily fired since the start of the fighting, reported having heard strong explosions all night.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that the country’s Air Force strike had severely damaged Armenia’s special artillery regiment, while Armenia called it “another disinformation of Azerbaijan’s military and political leadership.”
According to Shushan Stepanyan, a spokesman for the Armenian Ministry of Defense, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces are violating the ceasefire agreement by continuing armaments, missiles and artillery strikes south of the Karabakh front. “Karabakh Defense Army units repel all enemy activities,” she wrote on Facebook.
Vahram Pogosyan, the president of Nagorno-Karabakh, said on Sunday that the shooting of Stepanakert at night was “disrespectful of the agreement reached in Moscow” and called on the international community to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence in order to end the conflict.
Meanwhile, a senior Azerbaijani official said on Saturday that a ceasefire agreement had been reached “only temporarily” and that Baku did not intend to abandon its intention to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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