BAKU, October 31. /TASS/. The civilian death toll has risen to 91 in Azerbaijan since the escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on Saturday.
"Since September 27 and up to now, 91 civilians have been killed and 404 more wounded in the shelling by the Armenian Armed Forces against inhabited localities in Azerbaijan," the press release says.
The Prosecutor General’s Office pointed out that 97 apartment buildings, 2,465 private houses and 455 other civil facilities were damaged.
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. Three ceasefire agreements have been negotiated so far, but almost immediately both sides begin blaming each other for violating the truce.
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.