Armenia, Azerbaijan trade accusations of shelling of civilians on ninth day of conflict

Armenia, Azerbaijan trade accusations of shelling of civilians on ninth day of conflict
Photograph released by Armenian defence ministry said to show soldiers repelling an Azerbaijani advance. / Armenian defence ministry.
By bne IntelIiNews October 6, 2020

The ninth day of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict saw Armenia and Azerbaijan trade further accusations of the shelling of civilian districts in cities.

Separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh—a mountainous ethnic Armenian enclave that broke away from Azerbaijan in the 1990s and is run as an internationally unrecognised self-proclaimed republic—have reported continuous heavy artillery fire on their capital, Stepanakert, for five straight days. Azerbaijan’s defence ministry in turn said that Armenian forces were shelling “densely populated civilian areas” in several of its cities and towns—including second city Ganja, Barda, Tartar and Beylagan—on October 5, after also hitting Ganja the day before. Nagorno-Karabakh said the first Ganja attack was an act of retaliation and a “warning” against targeting civilian settlements in the breakaway region.

Armenia’s foreign ministry dismissed allegations of attacks being launched from Armenia’s territory as a “disinformation campaign” by Azerbaijan. None of the claims made by the adversaries could be immediately verified and the numbers of casualties—observers fear there are hundreds of military fatalities and scores of civilian deaths on both sides—are still very difficult to estimate amid the carnarge and information war.

Call for immediate ceasefire reiterated

Late on October 5, Russia, France and the US reiterated their call for an immediate ceasefire in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. They said that the escalating conflict represented an "unacceptable threat" to the region's stability.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the call in a joint statement. The previous call from the three powers was ignored by the combatants, while Turkey, which is aggressively backing close ally Azerbaijan, said that given the three decades of failure in resolving the question of the enclave, the three countries had no business intervening in the way that they were.

Lavrov, Le Drian, and Pompeo, whose countries are the co-chairs of the so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has attempted to find a formula for peace in Nagorno-Karabakh since the early 1990s, condemned "in the strongest terms the unprecedented and dangerous escalation of violence".

The ministers "stress unconditionally that recent attacks allegedly targeting civilian centers—both along the Line of Contact and on the territories of Azerbaijan and Armenia outside the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone—and the disproportionate nature of such attacks constitute an unacceptable threat to the stability of the region".

They also urged both sides to accept an "immediate and unconditional" ceasefire and to "commit now to resuming the settlement process" under the direction of the Minsk Group.

“Indiscriminate shelling”

The International Red Cross on October 4 condemned reports from the conflict zone of “indiscriminate shelling and other alleged unlawful attacks using explosive weaponry in cities, towns, and other populated areas”.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, said it had corroborated the use of banned cluster bombs in the conflict. It said that over the weekend, footage consistent with the use of cluster munitions in Stepanakert was published by the region’s de facto authorities. The human rights group’s Crisis Response experts said that they were able to trace the location of the footage to residential areas of Stepanakert, and identified Israeli-made M095 DPICM cluster munitions that appear to have been fired by Azerbaijani forces.

“The use of cluster bombs in any circumstances is banned under international humanitarian law, so their use to attack civilian areas is particularly dangerous and will only lead to further deaths and injuries,” said Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s acting head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

“Cluster bombs are inherently indiscriminate weapons, and their deployment in residential areas is absolutely appalling and unacceptable. As fighting continues to escalate, civilians must be protected, not deliberately targeted or recklessly endangered.”

Amnesty International has called on all sides to the conflict to fully respect international humanitarian law, and to protect civilians from the effects of hostilities.

Cluster munitions scatter hundreds of bomblets, or submunitions, over a wide area. It is estimated that between 5 and 20% of cluster bomblets fail to explode, said Amnesty. They are then left behind, posing a threat to civilians similar to that of anti-personnel landmines. 

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