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Azerbaijani president says Armenia is supplied with weapons from aboard

"We are fighting unaided", he said
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev Mikhail Metzel/TASS
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev
© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

BAKU, October 25. /TASS/. Armenia is supplied with weapons from foreign countries, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday at a meeting with senior officials of the country’s defense ministry.

"I must say that Armenia is arming itself. The most state-of-the-art weapons are being dispatched to Armenia every day. We have a list of such weapons. We have data about the flights: when, where from the flight was performed to Yerevan, and which cargo it carried," he said, adding that Armenia "has been supplied with weapons free of charge."

"We cannot keep silent about that," he said. "We are fighting unaided."

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. Fighting continues in the region despite two declared ceasefire agreements.

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.