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YEREVAN, Armenia — Dozens of people have reportedly been killed in Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijan’s military offensive against the breakaway region stretches into a second day.
Locals living in the ethnic-Armenian controlled region, surrounded on all sides by Azerbaijani troops, sought refuge in basements Tuesday night amid a massive artillery barrage. Siranush Sargsyan, a local journalist, wrote online that she had spent the night in a bomb shelter. “I don’t know if we will wake up,” she said.
In a briefing Wednesday morning, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense spokesman, Anar Eyvazov, insisted that Azerbaijan is not targeting civilians, but the South Caucasus country accuses Armenian commanders of stationing troops in residential areas.
“The Azerbaijani army is reported to have suppressed by now the resistance of Armenian military units and to have broken the line of contact in several directions,” Vaqif Sadiqov, Azerbaijan’s EU ambassador, wrote online. “The Armenian military must lay down their arms and surrender, or face the consequences.”
Nagorno-Karabakh — which lies inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders but has been controlled by its ethnic Armenian population since a war which followed the fall of the Soviet Union — has been fought over by the two countries for decades, with the Azerbaijani government insisting it has the right to suppress “illegal” military units on the territory.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Tuesday night that he would not allow Azerbaijan “to drag the Republic of Armenia into military operations,” refusing to become embroiled in the conflict across the border.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Yerevan, calling for Armenia to intervene in Nagorno-Karabakh, with police forced to deploy stun grenades to prevent government buildings being stormed. Major demonstrations were also held outside the Russian embassy, with Moscow’s peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh failing to prevent the bloodshed.
According to Gegham Stepanyan, a human rights defender for the unrecognized Karabakh Armenian state of Artsakh, as of the early hours of Wednesday morning, “there are 35 injured persons among the civilian population: 13 children, 15 women and seven men.”
Meanwhile, he added, at least 27 people are known to have died, but in the absence of stable communications the numbers could be far higher.
While reports from the front line are sparse, given internet access and telephone signal have been largely cut off, Azerbaijan says its troops have several sites inside territory held until now by Karabakh Armenian forces.
Armenian media reports that the historic Amaras monastery, dating to the fourth century, has changed hands, raising fears for its survival given Azerbaijan has previously been accused of leveling hundreds of Armenian churches.
Tom de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, said the escalation marks “a new war in Karabakh” and “a terrible day for Western diplomacy” given the failure of efforts to convince Azerbaijan not to use force to resolve the conflict. “It has the potential to get a whole lot worse,” he added.
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has called “for the immediate cessation of hostilities and for Azerbaijan to stop the current military activities.” The U.S. State Department said Washington is “pressing for an immediate end to hostilities” and, amid concerns the war could spill out of Nagorno-Karabakh, “reaffirmed U.S. support for Armenia’s sovereignty and independence.”
