Explained: Deadly border clashes erupt between Armenia, Azerbaijan

Clashes erupted overnight along the volatile Azerbaijan-Armenia borders near Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving at least the death of nearly 50 Armenian troops, according to a French news outlet France24.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accuses Azerbaijan of attacking Armenian towns because of a simmering dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Armenia should cease its provocations and focus on peace negotiations and cooperation with Azerbaijan,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted after a phone call with Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov.

The latest flare-up risks marring ongoing talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan to sign a peace agreement, according to AFP.

The fighting was the worst since the end of a 2020 war between the two former republics of the USSR over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region that left more than 6,500 killed on both sides.

Meanwhile, Turkey firmly sided with its regional ally Azerbaijan in the latest deadly outbreak of violence in the Caucasus, telling Armenia to “cease its provocations” against Baku.

Foreign powers including Iran, Russia and the European Union have called for both sides to exercise restraint, according to Aljazeera.

France will raise the topic of clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the UN Security Council, the office of President Emmanuel Macron has said, adding that he continued to urge both sides to stick to a ceasefire, reported Aljazeera.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani has called for the “peaceful resolution of disputes between the two countries, and expresses its concern over the escalation of tensions”.

On the other hand, Russia asked both the countries to cease hostilities and observe a ceasefire agreement. In a statement, Russia’s foreign ministry said it had brokered a ceasefire on Tuesday and that it expected both sides to fulfill the terms of the agreement.

Reasons behind the latest tensions

Two former USSR republics – Armenia and Azerbaijan – have been locked in a decades-old dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that lies within Azerbaijan but was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994.

A 2020 conflict, which killed more than 6,500 people in a little over six weeks, saw Azerbaijan successfully win back swaths of territory in and around the enclave.

According to Aljazeera, the war ended after Russia, which has a military base in Armenia, brokered a peace deal in November of that year and deployed almost 2,000 peacekeepers to the region, which remains predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians. But both sides have since accused each other of regular breaches of the agreement.