World News – AU – Armenia imposes martial law after clashes with Azerbaijan

Armenia declared martial law and ordered full mobilization of its army after claiming to destroy several Azerbaijani planes and tanks in clashes over a disputed region on Sunday

Armenia said Azerbaijan carried out an air and artillery attack on the disputed region, Nagorno-Karabakh, but Azerbaijan said it responded to Armenian bombardments

Human rights activists in Armenia say two civilians – a woman and a child – were killed in Azerbaijani bombing Armenian military officials reported at least 10 casualties on their side

Officials in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, say an unknown number of their civilians were killed and six wounded, and Nagorno-Karabakh said 10 of its soldiers were killed Reports cannot be independently confirmed

The Azerbaijani army said it had taken control of six villages in Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday afternoon, a claim Armenia rejected

The long-running dispute in the southern Caucasus raises regional and Western concerns as the area is a corridor for pipelines transporting oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to global markets

Turkey has strong cultural and economic ties with Azerbaijan and has threatened to support it in any conflict Russia, another regional power, has traditionally been close to Armenia, but has growing ties with Azerbaijani elites these past last years

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a statement posted on Twitter that Armenia had « once again shown itself to be the greatest threat to peace and tranquility in the region » and that the Turkey stood alongside Azerbaijan « with all its means, as always »

The Armenian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its troops destroyed three tanks and shot down two helicopters and three unmanned aerial vehicles in response to an attack on civilian targets, including the Nagorno-Karabakh capital Stepanakert

« Our response will be proportionate, and Azerbaijan’s military-political leaders bear full responsibility for the situation, » the ministry said in a statement taken over by the Foreign Ministry

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote on Twitter: « We stand strong alongside our army to protect our homeland from Azeri invasion »

Azerbaijan has denied the statement of the Armenian Defense Ministry, claiming that it has « a complete advantage over the enemy at the front », and accused the Armenian forces of launching « deliberate and targeted » attacks along the front line

« We defend our territory, our cause is just, » Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a speech to the nation

The two former Soviet republics clashed for years in the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian territory that is officially part of Azerbaijan but which broke away from the country as the Soviet Union dissolves

Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a six-year war in the region until a ceasefire in 1994, and since then Nagorno-Karabakh has ruled as an independent republic of Artsakh facto

The two countries continued to accuse each other of violating the ceasefire in the enclave and elsewhere along their border in the years that followed, including everything throughout 2020, with more than a dozen soldiers and civilians killed in the fighting in recent months

At least 200 people were killed in an outbreak of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in April 2016

Azerbaijan, Armenia, Republic of Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh war