ANKARA, September 19. /TASS/. The tasks of Baku's anti-terrorist operation in Nagorno-Karabakh are close to completion, Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmat Hajiyev told the Turkish TRT TV channel.

"It is reported that the main tasks are about to be accomplished. The military targets we defined earlier have already been neutralized. And further, as planned, the operations will continue on a more limited scale," he said.

Hajiyev pointed out that Azerbaijan had "informed Russia and Turkey about the operation." He added that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed, among other things, the Turkish president's initiative to hold negotiations on Karabakh in a four-party format with the participation of Armenia.

Commenting on the goals of the Karabakh operation, the presidential aide said that the current leadership of the region should be removed and the Armenian military stationed there should be disarmed. "Our main goal is to neutralize the military infrastructure," he said. Prior to the start of the operation, according to Hajiyev, the Azerbaijani side informed the civilian population via radio, television, SMS and other services about the need to take measures to ensure security.

On September 19, tensions flared up again in Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku announced it was launching what it described as "local anti-terrorist measures" and demanded the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the region. Yerevan, in turn, said there were no Armenian forces in Karabakh, calling what was happening "an act of large-scale aggression." Residents of the Armenian capital took to the streets to protest outside the Armenian government building, blaming the country’s leadership and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for the situation.