BAKU (Sputnik) — The Armenian army is attacking Azerbaijani positions with mortars, grenade launchers and heavy machine guns in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said Saturday.
"The Armed Forces of Armenia are using 60 mm mortars, grenade launchers and heavy machine guns in firing at Azerbaijani positions on the contact line in Karabakh," the ministry said in a statement.
At the same time, Azerbaijani side reciprocated by firing mortars too, violating the cesefire between two sides, the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's (NKR) Defense Ministry said Saturday.
"Following the truce declared earlier for gathering bodies of those killed, Azerbaijani forces at night again violated the ceasefire on the contact line, using 60-mm mortars," the ministry told RIA Novosti.
Azerbaijan does not recognize the ethnically Armenian self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) and considers the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army to be a part of the Armed Forces of Armenia.
The violence in Nagorno-Karabakh escalated on Saturday. Baku and Yerevan have accused each other of provoking hostilities that led to multiple deaths on each side.
The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The warring sides agreed to a cessation of hostilities in 1994.
