Hürriyet, Turkey
March 9 2008

Armenia accused over killing of civilians in Karabakh

Azerbaijans defence ministry accused Armenian forces on Sunday of
opening fire on a residential area near the disputed region of
Nagorny Karabakh and killing two civilians.

The defence ministry said that two men, 26-year-old Niyamaddin
Ismaylov and 38-year-old Etibar Mikayilov, were killed when Armenian
forces opened fire on the residential area and Azerbaijani positions
in the frontline Aghdam region. Two other men were wounded in the
shooting which began Saturday night and continued until early Sunday,
a defence ministry spokesman said. It followed one of the worst
breaches of a 1994 ceasefire in the region in years on Tuesday.

Both sides accused the other of taking advantage of the volatile
political situation in Armenia to violate the ceasefire. The Armenian
capital Yerevan is under a state of emergency after eight people were
killed on March 1 in street battles between riot police and
opposition supporters protesting the result of a presidential
election Azerbaijan claimed that four of its soldiers and 12 Armenian
servicemen were killed in the fighting Tuesday, while Armenia claimed
it had lost no soldiers and that eight Azerbaijanis died.

Armenian forces seized control of Nagorny Karabakh and seven
surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, in a war that
claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and forced about a million people
to flee their homes. The two countries have cut direct economic and
transport links and failed to negotiate a settlement on the regions
status.

Armenian and Azerbaijani forces are spread across a ceasefire line in
and around Nagorny Karabakh, often facing each other at close range,
and shootings are common.