Clashes escalate as Armenian-backed forces say they hit base in Azeri City

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev’s office said the missiles that hit Ganca came from neighboring Armenia, an allegation the Armenian Defense Ministry denied.

Armenian-backed forces in the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh said they struck a military airport in Azerbaijan’s second-largest city on Sunday in a major escalation of fighting between the former Soviet republics.

Servicemen of Armenia's Emergencies Ministry stand outside the ministry's building which is said was damaged by Azeri shelling in the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh's main city of Stepanakert on October 2, 2020, during the ongoing fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region. (AFP)

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev’s office said the missiles that hit Ganca came from neighboring Armenia, an allegation the Armenian Defense Ministry denied. The missile strike killed one civilian and injured four others in a densely populated area of the city and did not hit an air base, the Azeri government in Baku said.

Nagorno-Karabakh said it attacked the military airport in Ganca in retaliation for Azerbaijan’s bombing of Stepanakert, the enclave’s biggest city. Arayik Harutyunyan, the disputed territory’s president, warned that its forces are now targeting military sites in large cities of Azerbaijan.

Azeri Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov described the attack as an “open provocation” by Armenia that “expands the theater of conflict.”

Harutyunyan, the enclave’s leader, was injured in a retaliatory precision strike on his bunker, Aliyev’s foreign policy aide Hikmet Hajiyev said. The Nagorno-Karabakh leader’s spokesman denied he suffered any injuries. It wasn’t possible to confirm the information independently.

Azerbaijan’s Aliyev, backed by Turkey, has vowed to continue the military campaign until Armenian forces leave Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts that Azerbaijan lost in a war after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. The violence that began a week ago is more intense and widespread than at any time since Russia brokered a 1994 cease-fire to halt that war, which killed about 30,000 people and displaced more than a million.

The latest confrontation adds to tensions between Russia and Turkey over proxy conflicts in Syria and Libya. Russia has an army base in Armenia, and the two nations have a mutual-defense pact, though it doesn’t cover Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday set seemingly impossible terms for agreeing to cease-fire calls from the U.S., France and Russia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday spoke to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and expressed concern about the clashes and increasing number of victims, a German government spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. Merkel stressed that all sides must immediately stop fighting and start negotiations, according to the statement.

Pashinyan called on the German government to take a clear stance, in an interview with Bild magazine. Asked if Berlin should publicly declare who started the current hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh, he replied: “Yes. And Germany should evaluate the involvement of terrorists and mercenaries recruited in Syria in this conflict in the region by Turkey.”

Azeri forces captured eight villages in the northeast and southeast of Nagorno-Karabkh, after earlier taking control of seven other small localities, the defense ministry in Baku said.