This week innocent civilians have sadly become - yet again - victims of the ongoing conflict about Nagorno-Karabakh: One woman and her two-year old granddaughter died in a mortar attack, carried out by Armenian forces out of the illegally occupied territories, Bundestag member from CDU Marco Wanderwitz told the Berlin Office of The European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS).
He was commenting on the killing of Sahiba Guliyeva and her two-year-old granddaughter Zahra Guliyeva due to Armenian shelling of the civilian population of the Alkhanly village in the Fuzuli district.
“Other heavily-wounded Azerbaijani civilians are being treated in intense medical care as further victims. We are very worried by this news about a further escalation of the conflict,” Wanderwitz said.
He noted that only negotiations can lead to a long-term solution and for that, any attacks on the civilian population have to end immediately.
The Bundestag member stressed that the current status-quo of a longer-than-20-year occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions by Armenia with the devastating consequences for the internally displaced people is no longer bearable.
“The United Nations Security Council has already several times demanded the withdrawal of the Armenian troops. These resolutions have to be finally followed through with in order to avoid any more victims and to establish peace in the South Caucasus,” he added.
On July 4 at about 20:40 (GMT+4 hours), the Armenian armed forces, using 82-mm and 120-mm mortars and grenade launchers, shelled the Alkhanli village of Azerbaijan’s Fuzuli district. As a result of this provocation, the residents of the village Sahiba Allahverdiyeva, 50, and Zahra Guliyeva, 2, were killed. Salminaz Guliyeva, 52, was injured.
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 December 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.
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