Azerbaijan, Armenia resume fighting, hours after cease-fire

Oct 11, 2020 5:38 PM EDT

By —Simon Ostrovsky

A residential building in Azerbaijan’s second largest city was almost completely destroyed and several people were killed after fighting resumed, hours after the Armenia and Azerbaijan limited-cease-fire on Saturday, Special Correspondent Simon Ostrovsky reports. He is reporting from region with support from the Pulitzer Center.

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  • Hari Sreenivasan:

Armenia and Azerbaijan are blaming each other for violating a temporary cease-fire that went into effect yesterday, with renewed fighting overnight over the ethnic-Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

A residential building was destroyed and officials in Azerbaijan said at least nine civilians were killed and dozens were wounded.

Special Correspondent Simon Ostrovsky has been reporting in the region with support from the Pulitzer Center and has the latest on the resumption of hostilities there.

  • Simon Ostrovksy:

It wasn’t long before the cease-fire that came into effect at noon yesterday had been broken.

These are the scenes in the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic where ethnic-Armenian forces, backed by troops from the Republic of Armenia, say missiles sent by the central authorities of Azerbaijan landed in a breach of the cease-fire.

Thankfully, no one was hurt in this attack here but in the Azerbaijani city of Ganja, a number of bodies were pulled from the rubble of a residential building, and the Azerbaijani authorities are blaming the Armenians for violating the cease-fire, it was reported in international media.

It’s a worrying development in a conflict that’s already claimed hundreds of lives and began on September 27th with an Azerbaijani offensive on areas that had been controlled by ethnic-Armenian forces since 1994.

With the international community consumed by global pandemic and a bitter U.S. election campaign, the world seems to have turned its gaze away from the fighting here and put little real pressure on the two sides to bring a halt to the war.

Russia has so far done the most to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. But efforts to secure an end to fighting have so far failed.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/azerbaijan-armenia-resume-fighting-hours-after-cease-fire