The military action centred on the breakaway province of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian separatist enclave in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s state news agency, Azertac, carried a statement by President Ilham Aliyev airing grievances against Armenia, including an accusation that Armenia was settling members of its diaspora in the disputed Karabakh region. The Karabakh region maintains a system to call up nearly its entire male population as minutemen, and this mobilisation was announced Sunday morning. Fighting in and around the Karabakh region, which Armenia calls Artsakh, was among the most vicious of the early post-Soviet conflicts. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, which is still spreading uncontrolled in the region.

Source: bd News24 September 27, 2020 19:18 UTC