Moscow, 7 September 2023 (dpa/MIA) - Armenia accused Azerbaijan of sending forces to its border and warned the provocation could trigger a new outbreak of heavy fighting in a region that has been the scene of simmering conflict for 30 years.

"Azerbaijan has massed forces along the line of contact with Nagorno-Karabakh and on the border with Armenia over the last few days," Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told a government meeting on Thursday, local media reported.

Anti-Armenian rhetoric has continued to grow, with Baku making more and more claims to Armenian territory, he complained. Pashinyan called on the the United Nations and the international community to quickly intervene.

The two former Soviet states in the South Caucasus have been fighting for decades over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory but inhabited mostly by Armenians.

In the early 1990s, Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Baku with the support of Yerevan after a bloody civil war. In 2020, with the help of Turkey, the Azerbaijanis, highly armed thanks to flowing oil revenues, managed to claw back control after an armed conflict.

In the ceasefire that was finally concluded, the Armenians had to cede more than 70% of the territories they had previously controlled in Nagorno-Karabakh.

But despite the ceasefire, eruptions of violence of continue. Tensions have also escalated over Azerbaijan's blocking of the Lachin corridor, Armenia's only access to Nagorno-Karabakh, for months.

Observers describe the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh as catastrophic.

There are shortages of food and medicine. Since Wednesday, bread has only been distributed in exchange for ration coupons.

Photo: MIA Archive