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Azerbaijan reports new attacks on border settlements by Armenian forces

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry informed that today at 19:30 (18:30 Moscow time), the Armenian Armed Forces have resumed intensive fire on the settlements of the Tovuz district and the positions of our units using large-caliber arms and artillery

BAKU, July 14. /TASS/. Attacks on Azerbaijani settlements near the border by units of the Armenian army have resumed, The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry informed on Tuesday.

“Today at 19:30 (18:30 Moscow time), the Armenian Armed Forces have resumed intensive fire on the settlements of the Tovuz district and the positions of our units using large-caliber arms and artillery,” the message by the ministry says.

The situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border

On July 12, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry informed of an attempt by the Armenian Armed Forces to attack the republic’s positions in the direction of Tovuz on the border using artillery. According to the ministry, the attacks have continued during the night. Baku informed that eleven Azerbaijani troops had been killed since clashes had begun.

For its part, the Armenian Defense Ministry informed of 4 casualties and added that border tensions had escalated after an attempted breach from the side of Azerbaijan.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the escalation of tensions of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border with his colleagues from Armenia and Azerbaijan Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Elmar Mammadyarov, calling on both sides to establish a ceasefire. On Tuesday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has also called on both conflict sides to stop the clashes and to begin the de-escalation of the conflict.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed border region between Armenia and Azerbaijan, sought independence from Azerbaijan at the end of the 1980s, which resulted in a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that claimed the lives of 25,000-30,000 people between 1988 and 1994.
Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been going on since 1992. Russia, the US and France are co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that acts as a mediator in resolving the crisis. The group also includes Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Turkey.