Azerbaijan announced on Tuesday that it had launched “anti-terrorist operations” targeting Armenian forces in Nagorno Karabakh, a region disputed by Armenians and Azerbaijanis and where detonations were heard by an AFP journalist in the capital Stepanakert.
This announcement comes three years after the start of the previous Karabakh war in September 2020, a conflict won at the time after six weeks by Azerbaijani forces.
“Anti-terrorist operations have begun in the region. As part of these measures, the positions of the Armenian armed forces (…) are rendered incapacitated using high-precision weapons on the line of front and in depth,” the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Nagorno Karabakh, a disputed region for three decades
© / afp.com/Valentin RAKOVSKY, Sophie RAMIS
Turkey and Russia have been warned
“Azerbaijan opened fire on various military positions in Karabakh,” Armenian MP Tigran Abrahamian said on Facebook. Azerbaijan said it had informed Russia and Turkey of its operation in Karabakh.
Baku justified its military operation by the deaths of four police officers and two civilians in a mine explosion on a road site in Nagorno-Karabakh, accusing Armenian separatists in this disputed region of having committed these acts of “terrorism”.
A humanitarian crisis in Nagorno Karabakh
Nagorno Karabakh, scene of two wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the early 1990s and then in the fall of 2020, is one of the most mined regions in the former USSR. Explosions regularly cause casualties there. This Armenian-majority mountainous region located in Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence from Baku upon the disintegration of the USSR, with the support of Yerevan, leading to an armed conflict won by the separatists.
But 30 years later, in the fall of 2020, the Azerbaijani armed forces took their revenge and reconquered significant territories in and around the region. This war ended after mediation by Vladimir Putin and the deployment of a Russian peacekeeping mission. But the truce has always been fragile and punctuated by armed incidents.
These new incidents come as Yerevan accuses Baku, which denies, of causing a humanitarian crisis in Nagorno Karabakh by blocking the Lachin corridor since the end of 2022, the only road between Armenia and the mountainous enclave. Armenia also criticizes Russia for its inaction. Baku, with the support of Turkey and its oil windfall, has built an army much more powerful than that of its Armenian neighbor.