{"id":214188,"date":"2020-09-28T07:29:33","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T07:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=214188"},"modified":"2020-10-01T05:49:05","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T05:49:05","slug":"at-least-16-dead-in-armenia-azerbaijan-clashes-over-disputed-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=214188","title":{"rendered":"At least 16 dead in Armenia-Azerbaijan clashes over disputed region"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Michael Safi \u2013 The Guardian Sept 27, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DGCXxBQDRhc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n&#8212;<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">At least 16 troops and civilians have been killed in the worst fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces since 2016, raising fears of instability in a region that provides crucial transit routes for gas and oil to the international market.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/armenia\">Armenia<\/a> declared martial law and ordered the total mobilisation of its military on Sunday after claiming to have destroyed several Azerbaijani aircraft and tanks in early-morning clashes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">It accused Azerbaijan of carrying out air and artillery attacks on a disputed region, Nagorno-Karabakh, that is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory but which broke away in 1991 and is run by ethnic Armenians. <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/azerbaijan\">Azerbaijan<\/a> said it had counter-attacked in response to Armenian shelling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/armenia_azerbaijan_conflict.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-214193\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/armenia_azerbaijan_conflict.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"195\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/armenia_azerbaijan_conflict.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/armenia_azerbaijan_conflict-300x163.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a>The clashes prompted a flurry of diplomacy to prevent a flare-up of a decades-old conflict between majority Christian Armenia and mainly Muslim Azerbaijan, with Russia calling for an immediate ceasefire and another regional power, Turkey, saying it would support Azerbaijan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Pipelines shipping Caspian oil and natural gas from Azerbaijan to the world pass close to Nagorno-Karabakh.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Human right activists in Armenia said two civilians, a woman and a child, had been killed by Azerbaijani shelling. Armenian military officials have reported at least 10 casualties on their side.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Officials in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, said an unspecified number of their civilians had been killed and six wounded, and Nagorno-Karabakh said 16 of its military staff had been killed. The reports could not be independently confirmed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Azerbaijan\u2019s army said it had taken control of several villages in Nagorno-Karabakh as of Sunday afternoon, a claim that Armenia rejected.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/jul\/14\/soldiers-killed-armenia-and-azerbaijan-border-clashes\">long-running dispute<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>in the south Caucasus attracts regional and western concern because the area is a corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to global markets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Turkey has strong cultural and economic ties with Azerbaijan and has threatened to stand with it in any conflict. Russia, another regional power, is traditionally close to Armenia, but has been forging links with Azerbaijan\u2019s elites in past years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, said in a statement posted on Twitter that Armenia had \u201conce again showed that it is the biggest threat to peace and tranquility in the region\u201d and that Turkey stood by Azerbaijan \u201cwith all its means, as always\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Armenia\u2019s defence ministry on Sunday said its troops had destroyed three tanks and shot down two helicopters and three unmanned aerial vehicles in response to an attack on civilian targets including Nagorno-Karabakh\u2019s capital, Stepanakert.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">\u201cOur response will be proportionate, and the military-political leadership of Azerbaijan bears full responsibility for the situation,\u201d the ministry said in a statement echoed by the foreign ministry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, wrote on Twitter: \u201cWe stay strong next to our army to protect our motherland from Azeri invasion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Azerbaijan denied the Armenian defence ministry statement, saying it had \u201ccomplete advantage over the enemy on the front\u201d, and accused Armenian forces of launching \u201cdeliberate and targeted\u201d attacks along the front line.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">\u201cWe defend our territory, our cause is right,\u201d Azerbaijan\u2019s president, Ilham Aliyev, said in an address to the nation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The two former Soviet Republics have clashed for years over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly ethnic Armenian territory that is officially part of Azerbaijan but which broke away from the country as the Soviet Union was dissolving.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-year war over the region until a ceasefire in 1994, and since then Nagorno-Karabakh has governed itself as the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Both countries have continued to accuse each other of violating the ceasefire in the enclave and elsewhere along their border in the years since, including throughout 2020. More than a dozen soldiers and civilians have been killed in fighting in recent months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">At least 200 people were killed in a revival of the conflict in April 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/sep\/27\/armenia-martial-law-clashes-azerbaijan\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/quu-JjM6aBU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The two countries fought a six-year war over the region, crucial for oil and gas transit routes, which ended with a ceasefire in 1994. Now fighting has flared up again<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=214188"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214194,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214188\/revisions\/214194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=214188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=214188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=214188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}