Azerbaijan, Karabakh rebels reach ceasefire agreement

Azerbaijan and Armenian separatist authorities in the Nagorny Karabakh region reached an agreement Tuesday to end four days of fierce fighting over the disputed territory, Baku and Karabakh rebels said.

"Military actions were halted as of 12:00pm local time (0800 GMT) on Tuesday," Azerbaijan's defence ministry said in a statement.

"An agreement to cease fire has been reached with Azerbaijan," a Karabakh defence ministry spokesman told AFP.

"An order was given to stop shooting."

An AFP photographer in the frontline Azeri town of Terter said both sides stopped shelling Tuesday afternoon after a night of sporadic artillery fire across the front.

Fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces has claimed at least 64 lives since it erupted on Friday night in the worst violence in decades over the disputed territory.

Both sides accused each other of starting the latest outbreak of violence, and Azerbaijan claims to have captured several strategic locations in Armenian-controlled territory, in what would be the first change to the frontline since an inconclusive truce ended a war in 1994.

Meanwhile, the so-called Minsk Group of the US, French and Russian ambassadors to the Organisation of the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that has long mediated Karabakh peace talks, was to meet in Vienna on Tuesday for talks seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Separatists backed by Yerevan seized control of mountainous Nagorny Karabakh, a majority ethnic Armenian region lying inside Azerbaijan, in an early 1990s war that claimed some 30,000 lives.

The sides have never signed a peace deal, despite the 1994 ceasefire, and sporadic violence on the line of contact regularly claims lives of soldiers on both sides, though the latest outbreak represents a serious escalation.
Source: :AFP