Azerbaijani troops break through line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh, President Aliyev announces
Azerbaijan’s troops have “broken through and destroyed the line of contact,” between Azerbaijan and the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a televised address, as reported by Interfax.
“I have changed the status quo on the battlefield. There isn’t one. The line of contact? It’s not there. We broke through and destroyed [it]. For 30 years, the Armenian armed forces have strengthened the line of contact with the help of concrete structures. […] And these structures were destroyed too. Nobody can withstand an Azerbaijani soldier,” Aliyev said.
Aliyev assured that there will be no new line of contact between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh.
He also added that the Azerbaijani military has taken nine more settlements in the region, in addition to the two captured villages reported previously.
However, Armenian Defense Ministry representative Artsrun Ovannisyan denied the reports about Azerbaijani forces capturing the village of Hadrut. “I’m in Hadrut now and for some reason I only see Armenians,” he wrote on Facebook.
Full-scale fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia resumed in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 27 and has escalated to levels not seen in decades. Russia has repeatedly called for an end to the fighting. On October 9, the foreign ministers of both Azerbaijan and Armenia arrived in Moscow for talks, mediated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
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