Azerbaijan Launches “Anti-Terrorist Operation” in Karabakh

Azerbaijan has launched local anti-terrorist measures to restore constitutional order, the republic’s Defense Ministry confirmed. The command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent and the leadership of the Joint Turkish-Russian Monitoring Centre were informed. “Anti-terrorist operation in the region has been launched in order to ensure the provisions of the Trilateral Statement, suppression of large-scale provocations in the Karabakh economic region, disarmament and withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from our territories, neutralization of their military infrastructure, ensuring the safety of the civilians returning to the territories liberated from occupation, civil servants involved in construction and reconstruction activity and our military personnel, as well as restoration of the Azerbaijan’s constitutional order,” the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense stated. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry assures that civilians and civilian infrastructure will not be the targets of this operation. The strikes will be carried out with precision weapons against positions of “Armenian armed forces, their long-term firing points, as well as military means and objects of military purpose”. Ruben Vardanyan, former Minister of State of unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh, wrote in Telegram: “They have started a massive artillery bombardment”.