News agency Reuters reported that a truce had been agreed with Azerbaijan after two days of violence linked to a decades-old dispute between the ex-Soviet states over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of instigating new rounds of shelling Wednesday across their borders as hostilities reignited between the two longtime adversaries.
Armenia's defence ministry accused Azerbaijani forces of launching combat drones in the direction of the Armenian resort town of Jermuk overnight and renewing shelling with artillery and mortars in the morning in the direction of Jermuk and the village of Verin Shorzha.
The Azerbaijani military, in turn, charged that Armenian forces shelled its positions in the Kalbajar and Lachin districts of Azerbaijan, near the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Armenia said at least 49 of its soldiers have been killed since fighting erupted early Tuesday, while Azerbaijan said it lost 50 troops. In a claim suggesting that the Armenian losses could be higher, Azerbaijani authorities said they were ready to unilaterally hand over the bodies of up to 100 Armenian soldiers killed this week.
The two ex-Soviet countries have been locked in a decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.
During a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed broad swaths of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories held by Armenian forces. More than 6,700 people died in the fighting, which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal. Moscow deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers under the deal.
