The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday that the country’s foreign minister will travel Thursday to Geneva to hold a meeting with the international mediator in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
“The aim of the visit is to meet with the heads of the Minsk Group in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Russia, France and the United States) and to present Azerbaijan’s position on settling the conflict,” the ministry stated.
On the other hand, the intensity of the battles between Armenia and Azerbaijan intensified, as the capital of the Nagorno Karabakh region, Stepanakert, was bombed throughout the night of Tuesday-Wednesday, according to an AFP correspondent.
Sirens sounded in the almost completely dark city intermittently every hour.
They were followed each time by powerful explosions, the nature of which could not be determined precisely whether it was rockets, artillery or air strikes.
A resident told AFP that it was undoubtedly the night of the heaviest bombing since the end of the week since Azerbaijani forces began targeting Stepanakert, a city of 55,000 people.
The bombing continued throughout the night and the outcome of the material or human losses was not yet known.
The violent confrontations that broke out on September 27 between separatists backed by Armenia and Azerbaijani forces around the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region are continuing without any indication of a de-escalation, and the two sides vowed to continue fighting.
Both sides reported 286 casualties since the outbreak of the fighting, including 46 civilians. But the real number could be much higher.
Most of the confirmed deaths are on the Armenian side, which reported 240 separatist fighters killed. Azerbaijan does not announce any losses among its forces.
On Tuesday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan considered that the renewed fighting in the Nagorno Karabakh region was caused by Turkish support for Azerbaijan, while Ankara affirmed that it stood by Baku in the conflict and called on countries of the world to follow it.
