Karabakh conflict: cities under fire as Armenia-Azerbaijan fighting intensifies
- Nagorno-Karabakh capital Stepanakert attacked by rockets in latest escalation
- Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of targeting the cities far beyond conflict zone
Armenian and Azerbaijani forces exchanged heavy rocket and artillery fire as fighting intensified over Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday, with the breakaway region’s capital and Azerbaijan’s second-largest city hit.
Armenia said that Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city Stepanakert, which has been under shelling since Friday, was hit again on Sunday and journalists said there were regular explosions and clouds of black smoke rising in parts of the city.
Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said meanwhile that Armenian forces had shelled Ganja, a city of more than 330,000 in western Azerbaijan, with footage showing buildings in ruins.
On Sunday night, Hikmet Hajiyev, an adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, wrote on Twitter that Armenians launched “missile attacks against Azerbaijani civilians and civilian infrastructure” in the industrial city of Mingechavir and the Absheron district, some 80km (50 miles) from capital Baku.
Stepping up its bellicose rhetoric, Karabakh’s presidency threatened to “expand subsequent (military) actions to the entire territory of Azerbaijan”.
Each side accused the other of targeting civilian areas, as the conflict widened a week after heavy fighting broke out in the decades-old dispute over the ethnic-Armenian region.