Drive Reported as Battle Flares Over Karabakh

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said Friday that Armenian militants are carving a deep new incursion into Azerbaijani territory as fighting flared once again around the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

But Armenian officials said the attacks in Azerbaijan’s Kelbadzhar region are only meant to defend a vital corridor that links the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia proper.

Azerbaijani news agencies reported that a three-month state of emergency had been declared in Azerbaijan. They said President Abulfez Elchibey signed a decree Friday ordering a curfew, censorship of all media, restrictions on travel and a ban on political activity by parties and movements that might destabilize the country.

Nagorno-Karabakh, which is populated mainly by Armenians, lies in mountainous terrain surrounded entirely by Azerbaijan. It was an autonomous region of Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The battle between the two former Soviet republics to control it has lasted five years. The sporadic, intense fighting between Armenians and Azerbaijanis has cost about 3,000 lives.

Armenian fighters opened the critical supply route, known as the Lachin corridor, last May, breaking through Azerbaijani territory with trucks of food and arms for the thousands of besieged Armenians remaining in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenian officials said Armenians in the enclave are simply trying to stop Azerbaijani attacks on the corridor. They blamed Azerbaijan for the latest escalation in fighting, saying it was Azerbaijan’s fault that all attempts at peace talks have ended in deadlock.

“The question of whether Nagorno-Karabakh would continue to exist” had arisen, Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Armen Dulyan told the Itar-Tass news agency.

Dulyan told Itar-Tass that the Karabakh Armenians had not advanced as far as Armenia proper this time, so they had not cut open a new corridor. But he acknowledged that they had surrounded a large Azerbaijani force beginning Wednesday, capturing several tanks, railway cars full of ammunition and dozens of Azerbaijanis.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Khafiz Gaibov said that as of noon Friday, Armenian fighters had occupied 25 Azerbaijani villages in the Kelbadzhar region and surrounded 32 more, taking control of more than 15,000 villagers.

He estimated that at least several dozen people had died in the new outbreak of fighting.

Azerbaijani Defense Minister Dadash Rzayev accused Russian forces of joining the attack on the Armenian side, saying that a column of tanks with clear Russian symbols had been spotted among the Armenian forces. Russia has repeatedly denied involvement.

Russia is involved, however, in a separate conflict affecting another former Soviet republic. On Friday, Georgia threatened to retaliate for Russian bombing of bases in Abkhazia, a region on the shores of the Black Sea. Russian commanders in turn warned Georgia to stop shelling the area around a Russian military facility in Abkhazia.