Azerbaijan’s offensive in Karabakh leaves 25 dead

Baku, September 19

A separatist Armenian human rights official in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh said 25 people had been killed there on Tuesday as a result of an Azerbaijani military offensive. Two of the dead were civilians, Gegham Stepanyan said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Stepanyan added later that 138 people, including 29 civilians, had been wounded.

The move of Azerbaijan to send troops backed by artillery strikes into Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh is aimed at bringing the breakaway region to heel by force, raising the threat of a new war with its neighbour Armenia.

Karabakh is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory but part of it is run by separatist Armenian authorities who say the area is their ancestral homeland. The region has been at the centre of two wars, the latest in 2020, since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. A Baku defence ministry statement said Azerbaijani forces had so far seized more than 60 military posts and destroyed up to 20 military vehicles with other hardware. — Reuters