Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
Baku, Yerevan, SANA- Battles have renewed in the Nagorno-Karabakh region last night, as Stepanakert, the capital of the region, was subjected to heavy bombardment accompanied by strong explosions, the nature of which has not yet been determined.
AFP reported that Stepanakert was bombed overnight, while sirens sounded across the city due to the bombing which is considered the heaviest of its kind since the beginning of the military escalation and battles between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces late last month.
In a time when the material or human losses which resulted from the bombing of Stepanakert haven’t been not known until now, Azerbaijan accused the Armenian forces of trying to target the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, while Armenia denied the matter.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan said in a statement quoted by Russia Today website that “the Azerbaijani forces thwarted an attempt to target the gas pipeline, which occupies a special place on the level of the energy security in Europe and it represents the largest strategic project in the region”.
Armenia denied these accusations, while Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan announced that his country “has repeatedly affirmed that the oil infrastructure doesn’t represent one of its targets.”
Meanwhile, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described the military operations launched by Baku in Nagorno-Karabakh with the support of the Turkish regime as “a continuation of the genocide against the Armenians and an attempt to restore the Turkish empire.”
The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh witnessed a sudden military escalation, while the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides exchanged accusations about the causes of the escalation.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced yesterday that Russia has intelligence information about the Turkish regime’s transfer of terrorists from Syria to the conflict zone in the region and that it carefully studies all information related to this matter.
Ruaa al-Jazaeri