STEPANAKERT, NKR (A.W.)—The Nagorno-Karabagh Republic (NKR/Artsakh) Defense Army quelled a diversion attempt by the Azerbaijani Army that took place around 11:20 p.m. on March 10. According to the NKR Defense Ministry, the NKR Defense Army pushed the Azerbaijani troops back to their positions, killing at least two and wounding several others; the NKR Defense Army suffered no casualties.
More than 5,500 shots from various guns of different calibers were shot at Armenian positions on March 10 and 11. According to the NKR Defense Ministry press statement, the Azerbaijani Army also used howitzer cannons alongside the usual arsenal.
“It is important to note that the enemy opened fire from the aforementioned [howitzer] cannons last night not only at Armenian units positioned at the direction of Akna (Agdam), but also at territories quite far from the conflict line, which is unprecedented since the May 1994 ceasefire was set,” read part of the statement. A howitzer is a type of artillery with a relatively short barrel that uses relatively small propellant charges to propel projectiles at high trajectories, with a steep angle of descent.
The NKR Defense Ministry said the unprecedented attack proves that the Azerbaijani side has adopted an unrestrained strategy to destabilize the situation at the conflict line, the result of which is unpredictable. The ministry also announced that the NKR Defense Army took firm and punitive measures to suppress the attack, as it controls the situation on the Line of Contact (LoC).
On the same day, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry claimed that Azerbaijani Armed Forces had responded to aggressive action taken by Armenian troops by taking punitive measures, during which up to 15 Armenian soldiers were killed and military equipment was destroyed and seized. The NKR Defense Ministry quickly denied that it had initiated any aggressive action and said it had not sustained any losses despite heavy shelling by the Azerbaijani side.
Royce and Sherman Call on Obama to Press Aliyev on Peace amid Ongoing Aggression
Nineteen-year-old NKR serviceman Aramayis Voskanian became the first Armenian casualty of 2016 on Jan. 9, in the ongoing conflict on the Azerbaijan-NKR LoC. Thirty-five Armenian soldiers and three civilians died in the NKR conflict in 2015. In early December 2015, in a span of two weeks, seven Armenian servicemen were killed by Azerbaijani fire, as Baku resorted to escalating the conflict by deploying and firing a tank along the LoC.
In anticipation of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Washington for a Nuclear Summit at the end of March, leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in February called on President Barack Obama to use the opportunity to personally press the Azerbaijani leader to stop obstructing the implementation of the life-saving Royce-Engel peace proposals for Nagorno-Karabagh.
The letter, authored by Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, builds upon an earlier congressional letter, sent by 85 U.S. Representatives to the State Department last December, in support of 3 practical peacekeeping measures, known collectively as the Royce-Engel proposals.
The full text of the Royce-Sherman letter can be read here.
To support this pro-peace initiative, visit www.anca.org/AliyevDC.
The timing of this flagrant aggression is suspicious but predictable.
Turkey’s President Erdogan will visit Azerbaijan on 3/15. So, Erdogan
and Aliyev are stirring the situation and raising the conflict on the
Line of Contact, for internal propaganda.
The real question is how the Obama administration will react, and whether his puppet, co-chair of the OSCE Minsk group, Mr Warlick will condemn the attack, or as usual put the blame on both sides.
To counter this, it is extremely critical that all Armenian-Americans,if have not done yet, visit http://www.anca.org/Action and take action. It takes few minutes, but can have a real tangible impact.
Vart Adjemian
Whatever the motives of Azeri government NKR forces must go beyond self-defense . NKR forces must go further than silencing the enemy, they must deal hard blow to Baku from which they will not be able to recover..
Obama and his government would not know how to resolve this issue, they would not know how to resvolve any issue. Warlick, is as before, an absolutely useless member of the minsk group. Obama will not do anything. Why not tackle the issue of who is supplying arms to those azeri’s. Where is that useless mob called the UN? why are they not attacking the main issue – “arms” – to simple, as they do not have the guts and neither have the americans to condemn very strongly what the azeri’s are doing. They cannot even condemn turkey because of political pressures. Ironic?????????????