Nagorno Karabakh: Heavy fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the exchange...

Huge explosions and missile strikes rocked the city of “Stepanakert” today, the main city in the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region, as fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces continued and entered the second week.

I heard sirens sounding in the city of “Stepanakert” this morning, followed by the sound of explosions. And the electricity supply to the city was cut off as a result.

“Azerbaijani forces are bombing civilian targets in Stepanakert with missiles,” Artsron Hovansyan, spokesman for the Armenian Defense Ministry, told Agence France-Presse.

Azerbaijan says that its second largest city, “Ganja”, was attacked by Armenian forces. An aide to the Azerbaijani president said in a tweet on Twitter that civilians in the city had been bombed, and he posted a video tape that appeared to show pictures of the damage to buildings there. According to reports from the Armenian side, its forces destroyed an air base in the city of “Ganja”.

The head of the Nagorno-Karabakh region had earlier warned against “military sites” in large cities in Azerbaijan, accusing the latter of targeting civilians in the city of “Stepanakert”.

As for the authorities in Azerbaijan, they said that they took “retaliatory measures” after Armenian separatists fired rockets from inside the city.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said that the Armenian armed forces were firing rockets at the towns of Terter and Hurrades, which are located in the “Fizuli” area, from “Stepanakert”.

Azerbaijan has rejected calls for a ceasefire, blaming Armenia for the outbreak of the conflict. It demanded the withdrawal of Armenian forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which separated from Azerbaijan in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and after a fierce war that killed 30,000 people.

The Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashnyan said yesterday that his country is facing a decisive moment as the Azerbaijani forces continue to advance in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The new wave of fighting that broke out on 27 September is the most intense and violent in decades, and has claimed more than 240 lives, including more than 30 civilians.

The fighting continues despite international calls for the two neighboring countries to stop clashes and start talks to end the conflict, as fears are growing that the fighting will expand into a war on several fronts to drag the two regional powers Turkey and Russia, which increases concern about stability in the southern Caucasus, where pipelines transport oil. And gas from Azerbaijan to world markets.

A few days ago, Russia offered to host negotiations aimed at ending the fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

It is reported that Russia is militarily allied with Armenia and has a base in it, but at the same time it maintains close relations with the Azerbaijani government.

French President Emmanuel Macron had warned Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “NATO”, which supports Azerbaijan, against what was said about the deployment of militants from Syria on the front lines in Nagorno Karabakh.