Azerbaijan adheres to humanitarian truce, shows restraint to Armenian provocations

27 October 2020 17:33 (UTC+04:00)

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By Ayya Lmahamad

Adhering to the new humanitarian ceasefire regime, Azerbaijan is taking only adequate measures, exercising a restraint attitude towards the provocations committed by the enemy along the entire front, the Defence Ministry has said in a joint statement with the State Border Service on October 27.

The statement reads that Armenia is deliberately aggravating the situation in various directions of the front, especially on the restored state borders, laying the groundwork for its further provocations.

“The Armenian leadership must now realize and reckon that the restored state borders are not a zone of conflict, but state borders recognized by the international community, which define the full sovereign territories of Azerbaijan. The inviolability of the state border must be ensured. Any provocation in this direction is assessed as an attack on our territorial integrity,” the statement reads.

Moreover, it was emphasized that Azerbaijan has the right to destroy any legitimate military targets that threaten its territory, regardless of its location.

It should be noted that Armenia violated the US-brokered truce shorty after it went into effect on October 26.

The US-mediated cease-fire agreement was announced on October 25 following the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers’ meetings with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and entered force as of 8 a.m. on October 26.

This is the third humanitarian cease-fire that was agreed since the escalation of the tension on September 27.

The two previous truce agreements that had been brokered by Russia, were also violated by Armenian few hours after they went into effect on October 10 and October 17 respectively.

Armenian armed forces launched a large-scale operation in the front-line zone on September 27 at 6 am, shelling the positions of the Azerbaijani army from large-calibre weapons, mortars, and artillery installations of various calibres. Armenia has been targeting Azerbaijan’s densely populated areas and infrastructure projects.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

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Ayya Lmahamad is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @AyyaLmahamad