BAKU, October 18. /TASS/. Azerbaijan’s Air Force destroyed an Armenian Su-25 attack plane, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on Sunday.
"On October 18 at 12:30 (11:30 Moscow Time) Azerbaijan’s Air Force downed another Su-25 attack plane of Armenia’s Armed Forces, which tried to carry out air strikes on the Azerbaijani army’s positions in the Jabrayil direction," the ministry said.
Armenian Defense Ministry Press Secretary Shushan Stepanyan dismissed Azerbaijan’s statement. "This statement is a blatant lie, we don’t have any downed plane," she told TASS on Sunday.
On October 17, the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministries declared an agreement to launch a humanitarian ceasefire from 00:00 local time on October 18.
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 over 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.