Seven Azerbaijani officers killed in ceasefire violations this year
By Sara Rajabova
Seven officers of the Azerbaijani armed forces have been killed this year as a result of the breaches of ceasefire with Armenia, according to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman.
Eldar Sabiroglu was speaking at a press conference organized on the frontline, after the visit by a delegation of Azerbaijani MPs and intellectuals to the military units based on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.
Sabiroglu said the ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Armenia was violated 705 times during the past four months of this year and there are casualties on both sides.
The precarious cease-fire was reached after a lengthy war that displaced over a million Azerbaijanis and has been in place between the two South Caucasus countries since 1994. Since the hostilities, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Sabiroglu said more intensive ceasefire violations are observed in the direction of Aghdam, Khojavand and Goranboy regions.
"Also, under the mandate of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman, monitoring has been conducted on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops nine times," the spokesman said, adding that each time before the announcement about the monitoring the Armenian side shows activeness.
Earlier Sabiroglu told Azernews that the Armenians tend to follow the ceasefire agreement when OSCE representatives are holding monitoring on the troops' contact line but after the monitoring they immediately breach the ceasefire and shamelessly blame Azerbaijan for this.
"They state at international organizations that Azerbaijan violates the ceasefire in an attempt to take advantage of this situation," Sabiroglu said.
As for the withdrawal of snipers from the frontline, Sabiroglu said that the snipers may be pulled from the contact line only after the Azerbaijani occupied territories are liberated.
The delegation comprising MPs Govhar Bakhshaliyeva, Sahib Gafarov, Nizami Jafarov, Ilham Mammadov, Defense Ministry spokesman, Colonel Eldar Sabiroglu, members of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Vagif Abbasov, Rafig Gasimov, national poet Sohrab Tahir, president of the National NGO Forum Rauf Zeyni and others visited military units in Beylagan and Fuzuli regions on the Line of Contact. They got acquainted with the living conditions of the servicemen, and then went to the frontline and reviewed the enemy positions.
International efforts to facilitate a solution to the long-standing conflict have been fruitless so far.
Peace talks are brokered by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs representing the United States, Russia and France. The negotiations are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs and dubbed the Madrid Principles, also known as Basic Principles. The document envisions a return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control; determining the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh; a corridor linking Armenia to the region; and the right of all internally displaced persons to return home.