Armenia-Azerbaijan fighting continues

Bloomberg

Armenia and Azerbaijan reported a fourth day of fierce fighting, defying growing international calls to halt the worst violence in decades over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Artillery fire is taking place along the contact line between the two militaries, Armenian Defense Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan said on Wednesday on Facebook.
“Intense battles” continue with combat operations taking place along the entire front line, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said.
The two sides must “immediately stop fighting, de-escalate tensions and return to meaningful negotiations,” the United Nations Security Council said in a statement after an emergency meeting on the crisis. Member states “strongly condemn the use of force,” it said.
Despite decades of US, Russian and French mediation to resolve the conflict, fighting has repeatedly broken out since Armenians took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts from Azerbaijan in a war after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
The violence that erupted last week is more intense and widespread than at any time since Russia brokered a 1994 cease-fire to halt the war that killed about 30,000 and displaced more than a million people.
Azerbaijan is fighting “on our own soil” and will stop only when Armenian forces leave Azerbaijani territory, President Ilham Aliyev said in televised comments during a visit to wounded soldiers in hospital.
China, the US and the European Union have all urged a halt to fighting.
Azerbaijan and Armenian forces engaged in fierce clashes when a decades-long conflict over disputed land erupted again.
Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan told Russian state TV that he doesn’t plan to seek assistance so far under the mutual defense pact. Aliyev said on the same channel that he’s calling up “tens of thousands” of reservists.
The region contains important energy and transport projects that connect central Asia to Europe bypassing Russia.