Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was willing to host the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan for talks, his ministry cited him as saying.

He held separate phone conversations with both foreign ministers, and the ministry said he called for a ceasefire and a halt to “provocative warlike rhetoric”.

Lavrov said Russia would continue to work both independently and together with other representatives of the Minsk group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to mediate in the conflict.

France has said it wants the Minsk Group – which is led by Moscow, Paris and Washington – to address the conflict. European Union leaders will also discuss it at a summit later this week, a German government source said.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave, broke away from Azerbaijan in the 1990s in a war that killed an estimated 30,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

In Wednesday’s clashes, Armenian media said three civilians had been killed and several wounded by shelling in the town of Martakert in Nagorno-Karabakh.

One person was killed and three wounded by Armenian fire on the town of Horadiz in southern Azerbaijan, the Azeri Prosecutor’s office said, bringing the total number of Azeri civilians killed to 15 since fighting began on Sunday.

Azerbaijan said ethnic Armenian forces attempted to recover lost ground by launching counter-attacks in the direction of Madagiz, but Azeri forces repelled the attack.

Armenia said the Azeri army had been shelling the whole front line during the night and two Azeri drones were shot down over Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh’s administrative centre. It was not possible to independently confirm the report.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, said he was not considering asking for Russia’s help at this point under a post-Soviet security treaty, but did not rule out doing so.