Armenia and Azerbaijan on Friday said more than 210 people were killed in border fighting this week, with Yerevan blaming Baku forces for atrocities in the nemesis’ worst fighting in two years.
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will travel to Yerevan on Saturday after this week’s escalation largely dashed recent western efforts to push Baku and Yerevan closer to a peace deal.
Neighbors in the Caucasus have fought two wars — in 2020 and in the 1990s — over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, the Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan.
Both sides accuse each other of provoking the clashes, which erupted on Tuesday and ended overnight with international mediation on Thursday.
On Friday, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry revised the death toll among its troops to 77 from a previously reported 71.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said: “At the moment the death toll is 135.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not the definitive number. There are also many injured,” he said at a cabinet meeting.
Armenia’s rights ombudsperson, Kristina Grigoryan, later said a civilian was also killed and six injured in shelling from Azerbaijani forces.
Armenian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Eduard Asryan accused Azerbaijani troops of committing “atrocities” and said they mutilated and dismembered the bodies of dead Armenian soldiers.
“This is a terrible atrocity, a violation of international humanitarian law,” he told foreign diplomats in the city of Jermuk.
– ‘International Mediation’ –
Grigoryan said the clashes also forced hundreds of Armenian civilians to flee their homes.
“Azerbaijan has targeted peaceful residents,” she said — a claim Baku flatly denies.
It was the worst fight since the two countries fought a six-week war in 2020, and Armenia’s closest ally Moscow is distracted by its nearly seven-month war in Ukraine.
Armenia’s Security Council said the violence ended late Thursday “thanks to international mediation” after earlier attempts by Moscow to negotiate a ceasefire failed.
A delegation from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a Moscow-led grouping of ex-Soviet republics – arrived in Yerevan on Thursday evening, the Armenian Defense Ministry said.
Armenia is a member of the CSTO, but Azerbaijan is not.
On Tuesday, Armenia’s Security Council asked for military assistance from Moscow, which has a treaty obligation to defend Armenia in the event of a foreign invasion.
With Moscow increasingly isolated on the world stage following its invasion of Ukraine in February, the European Union had taken a leading role in brokering the normalization process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
– transport clamping point –
At EU-brokered talks in Brussels in April and May, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Pashinyan agreed to “push ahead talks” on a future peace deal.
They last met in Brussels on August 31 for talks mediated by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
The talks also focus on demarcations and the reopening of transport links.
The issue of securing a land transport link between Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan and its ally Ankara via Armenian territory has emerged as the primary sticking point.
Azerbaijan insists that Yerevan relinquish jurisdiction over the land corridor that would run along Armenia’s border with Iran – a demand the Armenian government rejects as an affront to the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The six-week fighting in 2020 claimed the lives of more than 6,500 soldiers from both sides and ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
Under the deal, Armenia ceded parts of territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow dispatched about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.
Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.
