BAKU: Azerbaijan strikes Armenian army positions to prevent another provocation

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
July 7 2017

By Rashid Shirinov

Armenian military units were put on alert on July 7 to stage another sabotage against Azerbaijan, said Azerbaijan’s defense ministry.

However, Azerbaijan’s armed forces inflicted precise blows to the positions of the Armenian armed forces to prevent the planned provocation by Armenia and as revenge for the civilians killed in the Alkhanli village of Azerbaijan’s Fuzuli region.

The Defense Ministry reported that as a result of the strikes, a major part of Armenia’s manpower was destroyed, and several units of military equipment were completely disabled.

“Based on initial information, as the result of the activities carried out by our units in Fuzuli-Khojavend direction, majority of the enemy personnel involved in battalion’s area of operation were killed, some fighting vehicles were destroyed and other infrastructure facilities were made irrecoverable," the ministry reported.

“The units of Azerbaijan Armed Forces were brought into combat readiness in order to immediately prevent any enemy hostile activity against peaceful population and military personnel, and deliver response fire to its fire positions.

Currently, the operational situation is fully under control of Azerbaijani Armed Forces.

Overall, Armenia’s armed forces 130 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops over the past 24 hours.

The Armenians shelled the Azerbaijani army positions near the state border in the Gazakh, Tovuz and Gadabay regions, as well as the Azerbaijani positions along the Nagorno-Karabakh frontline.

Three days ago, the Armenian troops targeted the Alkhanli village of Azerbaijan's Fizuli region and savagely killed two Azerbaijani civilians, including a toddler.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts