23 dead after clash between Azerbaijan, Armenia separatists

At least 23 people, including civilians, have died after clashes broke out between long-standing rivals Azerbaijan and Armenia in the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region, officials said. Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked out in a territorial dispute for decades over the Armenia-backed breakaway enclave.

The office of Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general said an Azerbaijani family of five were killed as Armenian separatist forces shelled Azerbaijan’s village of Gashalty. Rebel authorities in Karabakh said 16 of its troops were killed and more than 100 wounded in the fighting, as well as two civilians, a child, and a woman.

Both sides have accused each other of starting the hostilities.

A major confrontation between Muslim Azerbaijan and majority Christian Armenia threatened to embroil regional players Moscow and Ankara and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called on global powers to prevent Turkey from getting involved in the conflict.

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France, Germany, and the EU swiftly urged an “immediate ceasefire,” while Pope Francis prayed for peace. Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the military flareup with Pashinyan and called for “an end to hostilities.”

Ethnic Armenian separatists seized the Nagorny Karabakh region from Baku in a 1990s war that claimed 30,000 lives. Talks to resolve one of the worst conflicts to emerge from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union have been largely stalled since a 1994 ceasefire agreement.

In July, heavy clashes along the two countries’ shared border — hundreds of kilometres from Karabakh — claimed the lives of at least 17 soldiers from both sides. Raising the stakes, Azerbaijan at the time threatened to strike Armenia’s atomic power station if Yerevan attacked strategic facilities. During the worst recent clashes in April 2016, around 110 people were killed.