BAKU, October 8. /TASS/. A total of 31 Azerbaijani citizens were killed and 154 others were wounded since the escalation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Thursday.
"A total of 31 civilians have been killed and 154 others have been wounded in the shelling attacks by the Armenian side on populated areas from September 27 to date," the Prosecutor General’s Office said.
The shelling attacks also damaged 133 civil facilities and 928 houses, it added.
On October 7, Azerbaijan reported that 28 civilians had been killed and 144 others had been wounded in the shelling attacks.
Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The area experienced flare-ups of violence in the summer of 2014, in April 2016 and this past July. Azerbaijan and Armenia have imposed martial law and launched mobilization efforts. Both parties to the conflict have reported casualties, among them civilians.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.
In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs - Russia, France and the United States.