By Theodore Shoebat
A major battle took place between Azeri Muslims and Christian Armenians in the region of Nagorno-Karabakhv. As we read in one report:
Azerbaijan has announced a unilateral cease-fire in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where a recent flare-up of violence between Azerbaijani and separatist Armenian forces has left dozens of people dead.
Separatist forces reject Azerbaijan’s claims of a cease-fire, saying they see no sign that the government has stopped fighting, the Associated Press reports.
The cease-fire announcement comes two days after a fresh wave of violence broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh, killing at least 30 Azeri and Armenian troops.
The BBC writes that civilian casualties have been reported on both sides.
A separatist war in the region in the late ’80s and early ’90s killed 30,000 and displaced a million people. For the last two decades, Nagorno-Karabakh has been controlled by ethnic Armenian separatists, with a cease-fire in place that has been periodically violated.
This weekend’s fighting is some of the worst since that cease-fire was imposed, the BBC reports.
The cause of the renewed violence isn’t clear; both sides point to the other as the source of provocation. The BBC notes that “nationalist sentiment boosted by pro-government media in both societies has been at its height in recent years.”
According to another report:
Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since a war ended in 1994 with no resolution of the region’s status. The conflict is fueled by long-simmering tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris.