Armenia Continues Shelling in Nagorno-Karabakh

BAKU (Sputnik) — Armenia continues shelling and provocations along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh, head of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's press service Khikmet Gadzhiev said Wednesday.

"The Armenian side continues shelling and provocations along the line of contact in [Nagorno-]Karabakh. We have evidence that the Armenian side was the first to launch military operations on the contact line in Karabakh. The Armenian side had been concentrated its armed forces on the line of contact until April 2," Gadzhiev told RIA Novosti.

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of provoking hostilities in the April 2 escalation of violence in the Azerbaijani breakaway region with a predominantly Armenian population known as Nagorno-Karabakh. The sides reached a ceasefire agreement on April 5, which followed by near-daily reports of hundreds of violations and scores of deaths on each side.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in a dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh since 1988, when the autonomous region left the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic and proclaimed independence after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The sedition triggered a war that lasted until a Russia-brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's Minsk Group, co-chaired by Russia, the United States and France, has mediated the conflict since 1992. The Group’s permanent members are Belarus, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, and Turkey, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan.