Parties to Karabakh conflict release shelling statistics since start of 2017

Overall, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence (MoD) has fixed over 20,000 ceasefire violations on the contact line in the Karabakh conflict zone since the start of 2017. The statistics was announced by Vagif Dargyakhly, the spokesman of the Azerbaijani MoD.

"In 2017, the Armenian party has violated the ceasefire regime for 20,307 times. On the average, recently, we registered over a hundred such cases per day," the TASS quotes Mr Dargyakhly as saying today.

The MoD's spokesman has noted that Armenians shell not only the positions of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, but also dwelling settlements.

In its turn, the MoD of Nagorno-Karabakh has stated that during the first half of the year, the Azerbaijani party violated the ceasefire for about 9,000 times, having fired over 121,000 shots at the positions of the Defence Army.

The Azerbaijani army used various kinds of small firearms, as well as used anti-tank missile systems "Spike" for three times, fired five shells from the TR-107 volley rocket fire system, the says the report of the MoD of Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the report, Azerbaijan also used D-30 howitzers, D-44 cannons, 60-, 82- and 120-mm mortars and various types of grenade launchers.

Also, in the first half of the year, "Azerbaijani special forces made several attempts of sabotage breakthrough," but "was thrown back, bearing losses," the report says. Only at the incident on February 25, the Azerbaijani army lost five servicemen, says the report, posted today on the website of the MoD of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.