Missile strike on row of homes kills 12 and injures more than 40 as fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan escalates
A missile strike has levelled a row of homes in Azerbaijan's second city of Ganja on Saturday, killing 12 and injuring more than 40 people in their sleep in a sharp escalation of the conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The early hours attack, which saw a second missile strike another part of Ganja and a third reach the nearby strategic city of Mingecevir, came hours after Azeri forces shelled the ethnic Armenian separatist region's capital Stepanakert.
The seeming tit-fot-tat attacks further undermines international efforts to calm a resurgence of fighting between Armenians and Azeris before it further draws in regional powers Russia and Turkey.
Pictures from Ganja show bombed out houses with debris littered across the street and rescue workers searching through the rubble left by the strike.
A drone photo shows damage at a site hit by a missile in the early hours of Saturday in Azerbaijan's second city of Ganja
Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of carrying out the attack, as separatist forces in the disputed Nagorno-Karabkh region admit to having carried out 'equivalent operations to stop adversary fire' after Azeri forces shelled the regional capital Stepanakert and the nearby town of Susi on Friday
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region within Azerbaijan which has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since a full-scale separatist war ended in an uneasy peace in 1994
Rows of houses were turned to rubble by the strike, which shattered the walls and ripped the roofs off buildings in the surrounding streets, a team from AFP news agency on the ground in Ganja reported.
People ran outside in shock and tears, stumbling through dark muddy alleys in their slippers, some wearing bathroom robes and pyjamas.
The attack came only six days after a missile struck another residential part of the city of more than 300,000 people, killing 10 civilians and leaving many on edge.
At the scene of the latest strike, exploding shells rumbled in the distance as rescuers and red helmets used sniffer dogs to search for signs on life.
Azeri search and rescue workers attempt to clear debris from the houses damaged by shelling on Saturday morning
News agencies on the ground reported people runnning outside in shock and tears, stumbling through dark muddy alleys in their slippers, some wearing bathroom robes and pyjamas. Above, a man looks in disbelief at the damage caused by the shelling
Sniffer dogs were called in to aid in the search for survivors after the shelling, while hoses from a fire truck were used to water down the suffocating columns of dust rising from the rubble
'We were sleeping. The kids were watching TV,' Rubaba Zhafarova, 65, said in front of her destroyed home.
'All the houses around here are destroyed. Many people are under the rubble. Some are dead, some are wounded.'
Hikmat Hajiyev, an assistant to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, tweeted that according to 'initial information, more than 20 houses were destroyed' on Saturday.
Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of carrying out the attack.
In a statement released by the Armenian government, Nagorno-Karabakh's military said it had 'carried out equivalent operations to stop adversary fire'.
The military said it had done so after Azeri forces had stepped up their attacks on Friday across the front, shelling Stepanakert and the nearby town of Susi.
Local women were seen weeping after the attack, which Azerbaijan said left 12 people dead and 40 more injured. It is not clear how many people may be displaced because of the damage caused to homes
A Ganja resident sits in the rubble and awaits a search for his relative in the aftermath of the attack
In the aftermath of the attack, rescuers periodically called for silence so they could hear the sounds of survivors as the hours passed, pulling passports, keys, bracelets and items of clothing from the debris.
They called in sniffer dogs and watered down the suffocating columns of dust with hoses from a fire truck.
'One woman was missing her feet. Someone else was missing an arm at the elbow,' said Elmir Shirinzaday, 26, in a visible state of shock.
Rescuers struggled to lift heavy boulders of rubble in search for signs of life, periodically taking breaks to try and calm distraught victims.
Rescuers struggled to lift heavy boulders of rubble in search for signs of life, periodically taking breaks to try and calm distraught victims
The search and rescue teams periodically called for silence so they could hear the sounds of survivors beneath the rubble of the destroyed homes
Passports, keys, bracelets and items of clothing have been pulled from the debris along with bodies and survivors that one resident said included people missing limbs
'My wife was there, my wife was there,' one man cried inconsolably while being walked toward an ambulance by a paramedic.
At around the same time in the city of Mingecevir, an hour's drive north of Ganja, AFP heard the impact of a huge blast that shook buildings.
Mingecevir is protected by a missile defence system because it is home to a strategic dam, and it was not immediately clear if the missile was destroyed in the air or had made impact.
The defence ministry said Mingecevir had come 'under fire', but provided no other immediate details.
An Azeri official said that another missile had hit a separate, industrial district of Ganja at around the same time.
There were no immediate details about that attack.
The decades-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict re-erupted on September 27 and has so far killed more than 700 people, including nearly 80 civilians.
The mountainous western region of Azerbaijan has remained under separatist Armenian control since a 1994 ceasefire ended a brutal war that killed 30,000.
Armenia, which backs Nagorno-Karabakh but does not recognise its independence, has admitted that Azeri forces have made important gains along the front in the past week.
An AFP team was taken by the Azeri military on Friday to one settlement re-captured in the southern section of the conflict zone near the Iranian border.
Azeri officials said they last controlled the settlement of Jabrayil, which includes strategic heights overlooking a fertile valley, during the post-Soviet war.
The current escalation is the deadliest and longest since that six-year conflict.
The shelling of Stepanakert and the strikes on the two Azeri cities followed a joint call from Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday to 'end the bloodshed as soon as possible'.
Why Armenia and Azerbaijan are fighting
WHAT AND WHERE IS NAGORNO-KARABAKH?
Karabakh is a region within Azerbaijan which has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since a full-scale separatist war ended in 1994, after killing about 30,000 people and displacing an estimated one million.
Nagorno-Karabakh is about 1,700 square miles in size, but Armenian forces also occupy other nearby territory.
HOW DID THE CONFLICT START?
Long-simmering tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris began boiling over as the Soviet Union frayed in its final years. Once the USSR collapsed in 1991 and the republics became independent nations, war broke out.
A 1994 cease-fire left Armenian and Azeri forces facing each other across a demilitarised zone, where clashes were frequently reported.
WHAT'S HAPPENED SINCE?
International mediation efforts have brought little visible progress. The conflict has been an economic blow to the Caucasus region because it has hampered trade and prompted Turkey to close its border with Armenia.
Fighting periodically breaks out around Nagorno-Karabakh's borders, often deadly, notably in 2016 and this July.
Since new fighting erupted on September 27, dozens have been killed and wounded in apparent shelling by both sides. Each country blamed the other.
WHAT´S THE BROADER IMPACT?
In addition to causing local casualties and damage, the conflict in the small, hard-to-reach region is also of concern to major regional players.
Russia is Armenia´s main economic partner and has a military base there, while Turkey has offered support to Azeris, fellow Muslims and ethnic brethren to Turks. Iran neighbors both Armenia and Azerbaijan and is calling for calm.
Meanwhile, the United States, France and Russia are meant to be guarantors of the long-stalled peace process, under the auspices of the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.