Azerbaijan vows retaliation for deadly strike on civilians
Azerbaijan vows retaliation for deadly strike on civilians
GANJA, Azerbaijan (AFP) - Azerbaijan s President Ilham Aliyev vowed on Saturday to take revenge on Armenia after a missile strike killed 12 sleeping people in the city of Ganja, a dramatic escalation in the conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The early hours attack, which also saw a strike on the nearby strategic city of Mingecevir, came hours after Azerbaijani forces shelled Stepanakert, the capital of the ethnic Armenian separatist region.
The explosions in Ganja levelled a row of houses and left at least 40 people injured in an attack Aliyev described as "a war crime".
He said his army would "take revenge on the battlefield" and promised to capture Karabakh by driving out Armenian forces "like dogs".
Our pain is deep
As the sun rose over the devastation in Ganja, Mayil Shakhnazarov, 36, said it was impossible to identify some of those killed.
"What can we say? Our pain is deep. Really deep," he told AFP.
The seeming tit-fot-tat attacks further undermine international efforts to calm a resurgence of fighting between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis and avoid drawing regional powers Russia and Turkey into a conflict that has killed hundreds of people.
An AFP team in Ganja saw rows of houses in Ganja turned to rubble by the strike, which shattered walls and ripped roofs off buildings in the surrounding streets.
People ran outside in shock and tears, stumbling through dark muddy alleys in their slippers, some wearing bathroom robes and pyjamas.
Everything shattered
The EU condemned the strike on Ganja and said a ceasefire agreed between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow last week "must be fully respected without delay".
"The European Union deplores the strikes on the Azerbaijani city of Ganja during the night of 16-17 October resulting in civilian loss of life and serious injury, said a spokesperson for EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell
"All targeting of civilians and civilian installations by either party must stop."
The attack came 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, Durdana Mammadova, 69, was standing on the street at daybreak because her house was destroyed.
"We were sleeping and suddenly we heard the blast. The door, glass, everything shattered over us," she said.
"There was smoke and dust -- we couldn t even breath."
Hikmat Hajiyev, an assistant to Aliyev, tweeted that according to initial information, more than 20 houses were destroyed in Ganja.
Nagorno-Karabakh s military said Azerbaijani forces had stepped up their attacks on Friday across the front, shelling Stepanakert and a nearby town.
On Saturday, Karabakh separatist leader Arayik Harutyunyan said "intensive fighting" continued "along the entire line of defence".
