Azerbaijan bombed the main city in Karabakh … and Armenia is...

Yesterday, Azerbaijani forces bombed Stepanakert, the main city in the Nagorno Karabakh region, wounding many people, according to an Armenian official, as fighting continues for the sixth consecutive day.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense in Yerevan, Artzron Hovhannisyan, said on “Facebook”, that “there are many wounded among the city’s residents, and civilian infrastructure has been damaged,” without providing additional details.

The government stated in Stepanakert that the Azerbaijani forces destroyed the bridge linking Armenia with Karabakh.

A government website, citing the Armenian Ministry of Defense, stated that the Nagorno Karabakh air defense systems shot down a warplane and two drones belonging to Azerbaijan.

Each side accused the other of starting hostilities, and rejected the possibility of any peace talks.

As part of diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Donald Trump and French Emmanuel Macron called on Armenia and Azerbaijan, on Thursday, to return to negotiations aimed at resolving the historic conflict.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry responded yesterday, saying that Yerevan “is ready to engage” with France, Russia and the United States to reach a ceasefire.

“We are ready to engage with the countries that co-chair the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to re-establish a ceasefire regime based on the 1994-1995 agreements,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said that it would welcome such talks for the sake of peace, but pointed out that Armenia will continue its strong and decisive response to Azerbaijan’s aggression on Nagorny Karabakh.

For its part, Azerbaijan stressed yesterday that Armenia must withdraw its forces from the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region to end days of bloody battles, after France, Russia and the United States urged a ceasefire.

“If Armenia wants the escalation to end, then the ball is in its court,” the Azerbaijani president’s assistant who handles the foreign affairs file, Hikmat Hajiyev, told reporters.

“Armenia must end its occupation of Karabakh,” he added. Fed up”.

Yesterday, the official Armenian News Agency (Armen Press) stated that 54 additional soldiers were killed during the fighting, bringing the total death toll among the Armenian forces to more than 150.

And it was confirmed that about 200 people had been killed since Sunday, including more than 30 civilians, amid fears that the fighting would turn into an open war on several fronts that would drag regional powers such as Turkey and Russia into it.

France warned yesterday about the dangers of “internationalizing” the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and “getting out of control”, in the absence of any indications of the possibility of a decrease in the intensity of the fighting.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts in a phone call that failure to end the fighting “would carry the risk of an uncontrollable escalation,” adding that he warned them of “the danger of internationalizing the conflict.”

For her part, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that the leaders of the European Union discussed renewed fighting between Azerbaijan and forces of Armenian origin in the Nagorno-Surabag region and seeking to reach a ceasefire as soon as possible.

“It is important to reach a ceasefire as soon as possible,” she said during a meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels. “This is the only way to solve this complex problem peacefully,” she said.

Follow our latest local and sports news, and the latest political and economic developments via Google news