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Azerbaijani army prevents another Armenian diversion

08 February 2017 08:00 (UTC +04:00)

The Azerbaijani armed forces have prevented another Armenian diversion, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry told APA on Feb. 8.

Starting 16:55 (GMT/UTC + 04:00) on Feb. 7, the Armenian armed forces were shelling the positions of the Azerbaijani army from different directions along the line of contact by using mortars, large-caliber machine guns, the ministry informed.

As a result of retaliatory actions immediately taken by the Azerbaijani army, engineering structures and firing points of the enemy were destroyed, the defense ministry noted.

Azerbaijan’s defense ministry stated that the Armenian army, by firing the Azerbaijani positions, was aimed at distracting attention from the attempt to carry out a diversion in another direction in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

According to the ministry, the Azerbaijani army detected Armenia’s actions in advance and immediately took retaliatory measures. The Armenian side was forced to retreat, suffering losses.

The defense ministry stressed that the Azerbaijani army suffered no losses and fully controls the operational situation along the line of contact.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in Dec.1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.