Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: Azerbaijan announces 'anti-terrorist operation'

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00:00 We'll start first with this developing story out of Azerbaijan.

00:03 The defence ministry there says it has started "local anti-terrorist activities" in the

00:08 breakaway ethnic Armenian populated Nagorno-Karabakh region.

00:12 Witness reports say blasts have already been heard in the Armenian separatist stronghold

00:17 of Stenpanakert.

00:19 Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but largely populated

00:24 by ethnic Armenians.

00:26 For the latest on this, let's bring in regional correspondent Regis Jente in Tbilisi.

00:30 Regis, what more can you tell us?

00:33 We have very little information at the moment, but what we can see on the videos, for example,

00:38 which were leaked on the social networks this morning, we can hear in Stenpanakert, the

00:43 capital of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, some automatic shots within the city, but

00:51 also obviously some blasts from heavy weapons.

00:56 So this is what happened in Stenpanakert, the capital of the breakaway region.

01:03 Some witnesses, some people in the republic says also that finally the attack is going

01:09 on everywhere on the contact line between Azerbaijan and its region of Nagorno-Karabakh,

01:15 but this is not confirmed at the moment.

01:18 Regis, give us a bit more context on this conflict.

01:22 Had there been rising tensions before this latest movement?

01:26 Yes, the context is extremely important to understand what's going on.

01:30 Indeed, the very last week were extremely tense and we can say that what happened this

01:36 morning in the Karabakh is not a big surprise after all.

01:39 But the context is the one which was born after the war, the second war of the Karabakh

01:46 by the end of 2020.

01:49 Azerbaijan won this war, managed to get the control of what it lost three decades earlier,

01:54 the Nagorno-Karabakh and the district around it.

01:57 But finally, after a negotiation of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, it didn't take

02:03 the Nagorno-Karabakh as such because it was populated with Armenian population and so

02:09 on.

02:10 But what we observe since now almost three years is that Azerbaijan is trying to put

02:15 the pressure on the Armenian side to get what it could not get after the negotiation and

02:21 the discussion with the Russian president.

02:23 The full control of what it considers its territory.

02:26 And this is the result of this pressure.

02:28 And we could observe that almost since three years with some threats on the international

02:34 borders between Azerbaijan and Armenia and on Nagorno-Karabakh as such.

02:39 Regis, thank you for that.

02:40 Regis Jante, there reporting from Tbilisi.

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