Armenia and Azerbaijan accuse each other of violating new ceasefire agreement

As the conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region excalates

BAKU/ YEREVAN:

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Sunday of violating a new humanitarian ceasefire in fighting over Azerbaijan’s ethnic Armenian-controlled enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The truce came into force last midnight (2000 GMT).

On Saturday, a missile strike levelled a row of homes in Azerbaijan's second city of Ganja, killing 12 and injuring more than 40 people in their sleep in a sharp escalation of the conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The early hours attack, which saw a second missile strike another part of Ganja and a third reach the nearby strategic city of Mingecevir, came hours after Azerbaijani forces shelled the ethnic Armenian separatist region's capital Stepanakert.

The seeming tit-fot-tat attacks further undermines international efforts to calm a resurgence of fighting between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis before it draws in regional powers Russia and Turkey.

Decades-long conflict

The decades-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict re-erupted on September 27 and has so far killed more than 700 people, including nearly 80 civilians.

The mountainous western region of Azerbaijan has remained under separatist Armenian control since a 1994 ceasefire ended a brutal war that killed 30,000.

Armenia, which backs Nagorno-Karabakh but does not recognise its independence, has admitted that Azerbaijani forces have made important gains along the front in the past week.

An AFP team was taken by the Azerbaijani military on Friday to one settlement re-captured in the southern section of the conflict zone near the Iranian border.

Azerbaijani officials said they last controlled the settlement of Jabrayil, which includes strategic heights overlooking a fertile valley, during the post-Soviet war.

The current escalation is the deadliest and longest since that six-year conflict.