Heavy shelling and civilian casualties dash hopes for Karabakh ceasefire
Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said that overnight shelling by Armenian forces on the country’s second largest city, Ganja, had left seven people dead.
Heavy shelling and civilian casualties dash hopes for Karabakh ceasefire
Hopes that a Russian-brokered ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan might hold were further dashed Sunday, with both sides accusing the other of intense shelling on civilian areas and escalating two weeks of fierce clashes. Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said that overnight shelling by Armenian forces on the country’s second largest city, Ganja, had left seven people dead and 33 wounded including children, less than 24 hours after the halt to fighting was supposed to take effect. Rescuers in red helmets dug through piles of debris with their bare hands in search of signs of survivors, an AFP journalist in the city reported. They retrieved one nearly naked body and gingerly put it in a white bag to be taken away in an ambulance while several horrified residents watched on and wept. One witness said they were woken by a huge blast that levelled an entire square block of one- and two-floor houses in the early hours of the morning, leaving nine apartments destroyed. “Everything I’ve worked f…
