Armenia announced the killing of at least 105 of its soldiers in the latest outcome of border clashes with Azerbaijani forces over two days, and the two sides exchanged accusations of launching new attacks in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, in the fiercest round of conflict since the war of 2020.

"According to the updated data, so far it has been confirmed that 105 members of the Armenian armed forces have been killed," Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a speech to parliament today.

Pashinyan stated that he is ready to recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan only within the boundaries of the Soviet era.

For its part, Azerbaijan offered earlier today to hand over the bodies of 100 Armenian soldiers it said were killed in these clashes that erupted on Monday night.

"Azerbaijan calls for a ceasefire and is ready to unilaterally hand over the bodies of 100 soldiers to Armenia," the Azerbaijani Prisoners of War Committee said in a statement.

The Azeri Ministry of Defense announced yesterday that 50 of its soldiers were killed during the clashes.

The two sides exchanged accusations of launching new attacks in the border region, despite Russia's announcement yesterday that its contacts with the two sides led to a ceasefire agreement.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said that Baku "resumed its attacks with artillery, mortars and heavy caliber weapons towards Jermuk Ferin Shurga".

On the other hand, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced that the Armenian forces violated the cease-fire and "bombed our positions in the Kelbajar and Lachin regions at night with mortars and artillery."


Fears of war

With regional and international calls to stop the fighting and reduce tension, especially in light of the Russian war on Ukraine, Armenia said that the Karabakh clashes may lead to another major conflict in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

In an interview with Reuters, Parwer Hovhannisyan, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia, said that it requires more attention from the international community.

"You talked about the war in Ukraine, that's exactly what our neighbor aspires to... to have all the attention focused there, without a proper reaction from our main partners," he added.

Hovhannisyan saw that his country's territorial integrity was threatened, and said he had asked Moscow to intervene.

In response to a question about the possibilities of the situation deteriorating and descending into all-out war, this Armenian official said, "There is a clear danger."

Erdogan accused Armenia of violating the agreement signed after the 2020 war (Reuters - Archive)

Erdogan condemns Armenia

On the other hand, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Armenia of violating the agreement concluded with Azerbaijan after the 2020 war, and said that his country could not accept that.

Turkish officials had denounced what they described as the Armenian provocations, which they said had caused an escalation of tension in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed his country's support for Azerbaijan.

In the United States, the Coordinator of Strategic Communications at the National Security Council, John Kirby, said that his country is concerned about the continuation of mutual attacks on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border.

Kirby added - in a press conference at the White House - that the United States is in contact with the two parties to resolve the crisis, and confirms that there is no military solution to this conflict.

He noted that Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken spoke - by phone - with the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and the Prime Minister of Armenia.

The two countries have been locked in a decades-old conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which historically had a majority Armenian population but was a legal part of Azerbaijan under Soviet rule.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Karabakh region declared its independence from Baku under the name of the Republic of Artsakh, with the support of Yerevan, sparking a 3-year war.

The war ended in 1994 with the victory of Armenia, and Karabakh remained a quarter of a century under de facto Armenian control, although its status was never internationally recognized.

After decades of stalemate, Azerbaijan suddenly recaptured large parts of this region in a military campaign in 2020, forcing Armenia to make major territorial concessions.