Nagorno-Karabakh truce under severe strain
A fragile truce in Nagorno-Karabakh was under severe strain on Sunday (October 11) - just one day after it was agreed - with Azerbaijan and Armenia accusing each other of serious violations and crimes against civilians.
That was shown in Azerbaijan's second city Ganja where the Azeri authorities accused Armenia of heavily shelling a residential area in the early hours of the morning and of hitting an apartment building.
The Azeri Prosecutor General's Office said nine people had been killed and 34 wounded, though those figures could not be independently verified.
Presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev said the attack could not be justified militarily.
"But what we see here is just Armenia's purpose to kill civilians. Once again shows the true face of Armenia."
The Armenian defense ministry called Azerbaijan's allegations an "absolute lie" and accused Azeri forces of continuing to shell populated areas inside Nagorno-Karabakh including the region's biggest city, Stepanakert.
Arayik Haratyunyan is president of the breakaway region - internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated and governed by ethnic Armenians.
He accused Azerbaijan of breaking humanitarian rules by attacking people in Nagorno-Karabakh and though he described the situation as relatively calm on Sunday morning, he said he did not know how long that would last and said the frontline remained tense.
The humanitarian ceasefire was brokered after marathon talks in Moscow advocated by President Vladimir Putin.
Internationally the fear is that renewed fighting in this decades old conflict could draw in Russia, which has a defense pact with Armenia, and Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan.
