Azerbaijan claims to capture village during fighting with Armenia

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Armenia and Azerbaijan say heavy fighting is continuing in their conflict over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan’s president says his troops have taken a village.

The fighting that started September 27 is some of the worst to afflict Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas since the end in 1994 of a war that left the region in Azerbaijan under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanian says intensive fighting is “taking place along the entire front line” and that Armenian forces had shot down three planes.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry denies any planes being shot down and says Armenian personnel had shelled civilian territory. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev says his country’s army ”raised the flag” in the village of Madagiz.

Nagorno-Karabakh officials have said more than 150 servicemen on their side have been killed so far. Azerbaijani authorities haven’t given details on their military casualties but said 19 civilians were killed and 55 more were wounded.

Nagorno-Karabakh was a designated autonomous region within Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. It claimed independence from Azerbaijan in 1991, about three months before the Soviet Union’s collapse. A full-scale war that broke out in 1992 killed an estimated 30,000 people.

By the time the war ended in 1994, Armenian forces not only held Nagorno-Karabakh itself but substantial areas outside the territory’s formal borders, including Madagiz, the village Azerbaijan claimed to have taken Saturday.

Several United Nations Security Council resolutions have called for withdrawal from those areas, which the Armenian forces have disregarded.

— AP