Just after midnight Tuesday (late Monday evening), Azerbaijani troops launched simultaneous attacks on a number of towns and villages in Armenia proper, leaving at least 49 Armenian soldiers killed in action and three civilians injured, one critically.

Wide-scale fighting within Armenia marks an unprecedented escalation in hostilities between Yerevan and Baku, and the death toll makes Tuesday the single deadliest day in the region since the outbreak of the Karabakh war almost two years ago.