Heavy losses claimed as Armenia-Azerbaijan fighting rages
Azerbaijani and Armenian forces claimed to have inflicted heavy losses as fighting raged for a third day on Tuesday over the breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh.
Urgent calls from world leaders for a halt to the fierce clashes that erupted on Sunday have gone unheeded by the ex-Soviet rivals, who have been locked for decades in a territorial dispute over Karabakh.
The UN Security Council was scheduled to meet Tuesday for emergency talks on the military escalation over the ethnic Armenian exclave, where intense fighting in recent days has caused nearly 100 confirmed deaths.
Both sides said fighting was continuing on Tuesday, despite international pleas for a ceasefire.
Armenian defence officials said separatists in Karabakh had repelled Azerbaijani attacks along the frontline and that "the enemy suffered serious losses in manpower".
The defence ministry in Yerevan said Azerbaijan's military had suffered major losses since the clashes erupted, with nearly 50 drones and four helicopters downed, and 80 tanks destroyed.
Defence officials in Azerbaijan's capital Baku in turn dismissed claims by separatist fighters that the Armenian-backed troops had regained control of territory in Karabakh lost in fighting Sunday.
They said "fierce fighting" had persisted in the early hours of Tuesday and that their military had repelled an Armenian counterattack, destroying "an Armenian motorised column and an artillery unit" and, later, an entire motorised infantry regiment.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200929-heavy-losses-claimed-as-armenia-azerbaijan-fighting-rages
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