BAKU, February 25. /TASS/. Azerbaijan’s Armed Forces destroyed an Armenian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the country’s defense ministry said on Saturday.
"On February 25, units of Azerbaijan’s Armed Forces destroyed an unmanned aerial vehicle belonging to Armenia which was trying to conduct reconnaissance overflights above position of Azerbaijan’s army towards the village of Talysh (in the area of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict), the ministry’s press service said in a statement.
An Armenian permanent emplacement was destroyed as well, it said.
Earlier, the defense ministry reported about a night military clash in the conflict zone that resulted in casualties for Azerbaijan’s forces.
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
The highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabakh) is a mostly Armenian-populated enclave inside the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan. It was the first zone of inter-ethnic tensions and violence to appear on the map of the former USSR.
Even almost a quarter of a century after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Karabakh remains a so-called 'frozen conflict' on the post-Soviet space, as the region is the subject of a dispute between Azerbaijan and the local Armenian population that draws on strong support from fellow-countrymen in neighboring Armenia.
The situation along the contact line of conflicting sides in Nagorno-Karabakh deteriorated dramatically overnight to April 2, 2016 when fierce clashes began. The parties to the conflict accused each other of violating the truce. On April 5, a ceasefire agreement was reached with Russia’s mediation.
The participants of talks on Nagorno-Karabakh in Vienna on May 16, 2016, involving the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia and mediated by the foreign ministers from the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries agreed to observe ceasefire in the region in compliance with the 1994-1995 accords. The parties to the conflict also agreed to complete as soon as possible the work on an OSCE tool on investigating incidents along the contact line.
In a trilateral statement adopted on June 20, 2016, following a summit of Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents in St. Petersburg, the sides confirmed their commitment to the normalization of the situation along the disengagement line in Nagorno-Karabakh.