Azerbaijan and Armenia had accused each other earlier on Saturday of fresh attacks in violation of a week-old Russian-brokered truce.
Armenia and Azerbaijan said they had agreed on Saturday to a new humanitarian ceasefire from midnight (2000 GMT) in fighting over Azerbaijan’s ethnic Armenian-controlled enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Both sides had accused each other earlier of fresh attacks in violation of a week-old Russian-brokered truce that had failed to halt the worst fighting in the South Caucasus since the 1990s. Azerbaijan had said 13 civilians had been killed and more than 50 wounded in the city of Ganja by missiles from Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia, which supports Nagorno-Karabakh politically and economically and sends volunteers to serve in its army, accused Azerbaijan of shelling populated areas of the enclave and bombing targets in Armenia. The fighting is the worst in the region since Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces went to war in the 1990s over Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated and governed by ethnic Armenians. Both countries announced the ceasefire in identical statements. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had talked to his Armenian and Azeri counterparts by phone on Saturday and stressed that the truce that he mediated a week ago must be observed, Moscow said.
