New shelling rocks Karabakh ahead of first international mediators’ meeting

New shelling rocks Karabakh ahead of first international mediators’ meeting

Baku (Web Desk): Fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region spilled over today, with fresh shelling in the province’s capital ahead of a first meeting of international mediators in Geneva.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov was to meet diplomats from France, Russia and the United States.

Armenia’s foreign minister will not be attending, after Yerevan ruled out talks between the two countries' top diplomats as long as clashes are ongoing.

Zohrab Mnatsakanyan will instead meet his Russian counterpart in Moscow on Monday.

The battles began on September 28 in a long-simmering territorial dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave that broke away from Azerbaijan in the 1990s.