Baku
Azerbaijan’s army destroyed a large quantify
of military equipment belonging to the Armenian military amid the ongoing border clashes between the two countries.
“During the present day, the troops of the Azerbaijani Army, successfully advancing in the intended directions, took possession of new strongholds and carried out a cleanup of the territory from the enemy,” said the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry on early Saturday.
The Azerbaijani Defence Ministry also published a video of its military suppressing Armenia’s “combat activity in various directions of the front.”
Separately, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held a phone conversation with his counterpart French President Emmanuel Macron discussing the clashes at Armenia-Azerbaijan frontlines.
In a statement by Azerbaijan’s presidential office, Macron called President Aliyev to express his concerns over the clashes and urged a cease-fire and re-launch of negotiations.
The Azerbaijani president during the phone call stressed that Armenia is responsible for disrupting negotiation process and for triggering clashes.
Meanwhile, fierce clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijan forces continued on Saturday with the main city of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region coming under heavy shelling.
The leader of the breakaway province said he was heading to the front and that the “final battle” for the region had begun, seven days after new fighting erupted in the decades-old dispute.
Armenia’s defence ministry said Karabakh’s separatist forces had repelled a “massive attack” by Azerbaijan in one area of the frontline and had launched a counter-offensive. “Heavy fighting is ongoing on other flanks,” defence ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan said.
Reuters, reporting on Armenian casualties, said that 51 more servicemen had been killed, a sharp rise in the death toll from a week of fierce fighting.
Residents hid in shelters and on Saturday were clearing up wreckage and sweeping up the shattered glass windows of their homes and shops.
“This is a great sorrow for our community, for our people,” Nelson Adamyan, a 65-year-old electrician, told AFP outside his damaged residential building.
The new fighting erupted last Sunday and mounting international calls for a halt to the hostilities and a return to negotiations over the dispute have gone unanswered.
Meanwhile, the flags of Pakistan and Turkey were displayed by the people of Azerbaijan in the capital after both the nations supported the country in its fight against Armenia.
Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Pakistan Ali Alizada shared a photo on his social media showing flags of Turkey and Pakistan placed on a residential building in Baku. Earlier, Islamabad had expressed “deep concern” on the deteriorating security situation in the region after Armenian forces’ intensive shelling on the civilian population of Azerbaijan.
