Karabakh officials accused the Azerbaijani army of resuming in the morning offensive operations at various sections of the “line of contact.” They said it is trying to seize the southern Karabakh town of Hadrut.
Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army reported earlier in the morning intense Azerbaijani artillery fire on its frontline positions in that area. It said its troops are taking “adequate measures” in response.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said, for its part, that Armenian forces attacked some of its frontline positions overnight. It also accused them of again shelling Azerbaijani civilian areas north and east of Karabakh.
The fresh fighting was reported two days after the supposed entry into force of the “humanitarian” ceasefire agreement reached by the Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Moscow.
Mnatsakanian flew to Moscow on an official visit which Yerevan says had been planned before the outbreak of the Karabakh war on September 27. Mnatsakanian’s talks with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov started early in the afternoon on Monday.
“We can see that the [ceasefire] agreements are not implemented in full and hostilities are continuing,” Lavrov said at the start of the talks. “We hope that contacts that we are having with both you and our Azerbaijani neighbors, including through the Defense Ministry, will help to implement the agreements reached in the trilateral format.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier that the two ministers will “continue the dialogue” over international efforts to stop the hostilities and restart Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks mediated by Russia, France and the United States.
Mnatsakanian was also scheduled to meet in Moscow with the Russian, French and U.S. diplomats co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group.
A senior advisor to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian claimed, meanwhile, that by continuing the hostilities Azerbaijan is trying to torpedo Russian mediation efforts under pressure from Turkey.
“Ankara is pressuring on the Azerbaijani authorities that are in turn disrupting Russia’s mediation mission in order to increase Turkey’s role in the conflict’s resolution,” the official, Vagharshak Harutiunian, was quoted by the TASS news agency as saying.