Armenia, Azerbaijan ramp up fighting

Armenia and Azerbaijan have ramped up fighting over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, hitting higher-profile targets and widening the battlefield to major cities.

Azerbaijan said on Saturday that its forces had destroyed an Armenian-operated S-300 air defense system in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry released a video of the purported destruction of the Armenian-operated system. The ministry did not provide details about the purported attack or the site of the strike. It also did not provide information on the type of the weapons used in the attack.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also questioned Armenia’s ability to keep replacing military hardware destroyed in battles.

He said the Azeri army had completely taken over two regions previously held by Armenian-backed forces, Fizuli and Jabrail. “We are dominating the battlefield,” he said, adding that Azeri armed forces had never targeted civilian settlements.

‘All the houses around here are destroyed’

Also on Saturday, a missile strike targeted houses in Azerbaijan’s second-largest city of Ganja, killing at least 13 and injuring more than 40 people in their sleep.

“All the houses around here are destroyed,” said a Ganja resident. “Many people are under the rubble. Some are dead, some are wounded.”

Death, destruction after missiles hit Azerbaijan's second city of Ganja

Azerbaijan says 13 civilians have been killed and 40 others injured in a missile attack on the city of Ganja.

Just six days earlier, another strike had hit the city, killing at least 10 people.

Armenia denies hitting residential area in Ganja

Armenia, however, denied that its forces had attacked Ganja’s residential area, and accused Baku of continuing to shell populated areas inside Karabakh.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said Azerbaijan had attacked Karabakh’s biggest city, Stepanakert, on Saturday.

It said three civilians had been wounded as a result of Azeri fire in the region.

Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of attempting genocide

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused Baku of “an attempted genocide of the Armenian people.”

“We must defend ourselves, like any nation that is threatened with extermination,” he told the French newspaper Liberation.

The separatist government of Karabakh said 34 civilians and 633 forces had so far been killed in the fighting, which started on September 27.

Azerbaijan, meanwhile, offered a toll of 60 civilian deaths and 270 injuries.

Separately on Saturday, Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan, reiterated its support for Baku.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara would “always side with Azerbaijan.”

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar also talked to his Azeri counterpart, Zakir Hasanov, on the phone and congratulated him on allegedly liberating several settlements in Karabakh.

Armenia and Azerbaijan’s main foreign allies, namely Russia and Turkey, have called for the war to end.

A Russia-brokered temporary ceasefire came into force last Saturday in a bid to allow for an exchange of prisoners and the recovery of the dead bodies in the flashpoint region. But it collapsed soon afterwards.

Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but it is held by ethnic Armenian separatists backed by Armenia since 1992, when they broke from Azerbaijan in a war that killed some 30,000 people.

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