Armenia has accused Azerbaijani forces of firing on themselves in order to create pretexts to attack Armenian forces across the border, as fears of another escalation have again mounted.
“Night surveillance of Azerbaijani military activity has revealed that Azerbaijani forces are violating the ceasefire by first firing at their own positions and then in the direction of Armenian positions,” Armenia’s Ministry of Defense said in an October 18 statement. It said it had observed the activity in the vicinity of the villages of Sotk and Kutakan, in Armenia’s Gegharkunik province.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, in a tweet, said the practice amounted to “creating fake news on ‘ceasefire violations’ by Armenia.” In another tweet, he added: “Obviously, this is a creation of a pretext for new military aggression against Armenia.”
Azerbaijan’s MOD denied the allegation.
He-said-she-said allegations of ceasefire violations are not new in the conflict. Before the 2020 war, the only independent monitors of the line of contact between the two sides was a tiny mission, amounting to six observers who were not in the area full-time, from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Following the 2020 war even that monitoring effort was abandoned.
Now, the border is again set to see a third-party monitoring mission. The European Council on October 17 formally approved the deployment of a 40-member monitoring mission to Armenia. Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham...
Apple is set to pay $250 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the company of overselling Siri's artificial intelligence abilities on newer iPhones. According to MacRumors, the proposed class-actio...