Baku/Yerevan, 21 April 1997 (RFE/RL) - Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday were reported to have been involved in the most intense fighting in three years.
Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said Armenian forces using anti-tank guns, grenade launchers and light weapons began firing on Azerbaijani territory Friday night from Nagorno-Karabakh. The Interfax news agency also quoted a military official in Baku as saying Armenian forces also attacked Azerbaijani positions from the Talysh region, along the northern part of the border. The Defense Ministry said Azerbaijanis suffered a number of dead and wounded and returned fire.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said Azerbaijani troops opened machine-gun fire on Armenian army positions in the Talysh region. It said several civilians were injured.
Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian of Armenia and Geidar Aliyev of Azerbaijan held emergency telephone talks because of the clashes. A statement from Ter-Petrosian's press service said they agreed to send orders to military authorities in both camps to cease the hostilities and restore the ceasefire.
The two former Soviet republics are locked in a nine-year-old dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave inside Azerbaijan, but populated mostly by ethnic Armenians. A truce in 1994 ended a war in which 15,000 people were killed. Peace talks have failed to resolve the dispute though. Armenian forces currently control most of the enclave and some land inside Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said Armenian forces using anti-tank guns, grenade launchers and light weapons began firing on Azerbaijani territory Friday night from Nagorno-Karabakh. The Interfax news agency also quoted a military official in Baku as saying Armenian forces also attacked Azerbaijani positions from the Talysh region, along the northern part of the border. The Defense Ministry said Azerbaijanis suffered a number of dead and wounded and returned fire.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said Azerbaijani troops opened machine-gun fire on Armenian army positions in the Talysh region. It said several civilians were injured.
Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian of Armenia and Geidar Aliyev of Azerbaijan held emergency telephone talks because of the clashes. A statement from Ter-Petrosian's press service said they agreed to send orders to military authorities in both camps to cease the hostilities and restore the ceasefire.
The two former Soviet republics are locked in a nine-year-old dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave inside Azerbaijan, but populated mostly by ethnic Armenians. A truce in 1994 ended a war in which 15,000 people were killed. Peace talks have failed to resolve the dispute though. Armenian forces currently control most of the enclave and some land inside Azerbaijan.