{"id":34600,"date":"2017-05-16T16:18:50","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T16:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/nagorno-karabakh-azerbaijan-hits-armenia-defence\/"},"modified":"2017-05-16T16:18:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T16:18:44","slug":"nagorno-karabakh-azerbaijan-hits-armenia-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/nagorno-karabakh-azerbaijan-hits-armenia-defence\/","title":{"rendered":"Nagorno-Karabakh: Azerbaijan hits Armenia defence unit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Separatists in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region vow to retaliate after Azerbaijan destroys air defence missile system.}<\/p>\n<p>Azerbaijan says it has destroyed an Armenian air defence missile system in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, drawing a sharp response from the separatists who vowed retaliation.<\/p>\n<p>Azerbaijan and Armenia &#8211; part of the former Soviet Union until 1991 &#8211; are locked in a protracted conflict over the disputed region, and almost went to war in April 2016 following deadly  border clashes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Azerbaijani forces destroyed on Monday an Armenian Osa air defence system and its crew in the Fisuli-Khojavend sector of Karabakh&#8217;s frontline in order to avert the threat it posed to Azerbaijan&#8217;s aircraft,&#8221; an official from the press service of Azerbaijan&#8217;s defence ministry told the AFP news agency on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The Nagorno-Karabakh separatist authorities confirmed that an Azerbaijani attack damaged its equipment, but said there were no casualties. It warned in a statement that the Azerbaijani &#8220;provocation won&#8217;t be left unanswered&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Azerbaijani forces&#8217; provocation will not be left unanswered,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>The incident comes months after several Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in February in with Karabakh troops.<\/p>\n<p>In April 2016, at least 110 people from both sides were killed as simmering violence flared into the worst fighting in decades.<\/p>\n<p>A Russian-brokered ceasefire ended the four days of fierce clashes but attempts to relaunch the stalled peace process since then have failed.<\/p>\n<p>Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians &#8211; Azerbaijan claims they include regular Armenian military. <\/p>\n<p>That war in the early 1990s claimed some 30,000 lives, and the two sides have never signed a firm peace deal.<\/p>\n<p>Russia wields influence in the region and has sponsored mediation to end past clashes. It has stationed thousands of its troops and military hardware in Armenia, a close ally.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-20076 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/4f10a96c59464ee69e7dec89cfad5536_18.jpg\" alt=\"Attempts to relaunch a stalled peace process in Nagorno-Karabakh have failed\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Separatists in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region vow to retaliate after Azerbaijan destroys air defence missile system.} Azerbaijan says it has destroyed an Armenian air defence missile system in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, drawing a sharp response from the separatists who vowed retaliation. Azerbaijan and Armenia &#8211; part of the former Soviet Union until 1991 &#8211; are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-34600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34600"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=34600"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=34600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}