Azerbaijan's president threatens war with Armenia via Twitter

A convoy of Azerbaijan's army tanks moves in the direction of Agdam, Azerbaijan, on 2 August. Recent days have seen a sharp escalation in fighting around Nagorno-Karabakh. Photograph: Abbas Atilay/AP

Azerbaijan's president has threatened war with Armenia via Twitter, after dozens were killed in clashes over a disputed area of land that both countries lay claim to.

In a lengthy series of tweets, President Ilham Aliyev said several Azeri lives had been lost in clashes over Nagorno-Karabakh, and pledged to restore what he said was his country's 'territorial integrity'.

The two sides began fighting over the mountainous region in the final years of the USSR. Armenian forces took de facto control of Nagorno-Karabakh, where some 90 per cent of the population is ethnic Armenian, but it remains part of Azerbaijan under law.

A Russia-brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994 after six years of fierce fighting, which claimed the lives of an estimated 30,000 people. The dispute has become one of the world's 'frozen conflicts', and dozens are killed in clashes along the highly-militarised 'line of contact' each year.

Tensions erupted last weekend, leaving at least 14 people dead in the bloodiest violence the area has seen for years. Both sides blamed each other for sparking the clashes, and details of exactly what took place remain unclear.

The 'whole responsibility for escalation of the situation and human losses is on official Baku, which is the initiator of the tension on the front line,' Armenia's Defence Minister Seyran Ohanyan told journalists earlier this week.

Writing in English on Twitter today, Aliyev countered: 'As a result of attacks launched by Armenian occupying forces, our army suffered losses. Several servicemen have become martyrs.'

Referring to Armenia as 'the enemy' and 'the occupiers,' Aliyev said the people of Azerbaijan were disappointed with a perceived lack of action by international mediators to bring the stand-off to an end.

'We will restore our sovereignty. The flag of Azerbaijan will fly in all the occupied territories, including Shusha and Khankandi [in Nagorno-Karabakh],' he wrote. 'Just as we have beaten the Armenians on the political and economic fronts, we are able to defeat them on the battlefield'.

The US and Russia, which are co-chairs of the Minsk Group of international mediators, expressed their concern over the flare in violence earlier this week, and called for the ceasefire to be respected.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and his Azeri counterpart would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi at the end of this week, but it remained unclear whether this would take place.

Despite the violence, Armenia's Defence Minister said this week that he believes there were 'no grounds' for a 'large-scale war'.

Analysts have said Azerbaijan is merely attempting to attract international attention to the conflict, and is unlikely to wage an all out military offensive, especially in view of Yerevan's good relations with Moscow.

'As the losing side in the conflict, the Azerbaijanis make it their business to challenge the status quo, make the other side nervous and remind the world of the conflict,' Thomas de Waal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in an article for Eurasia Outlook.

In separate comments to EurasiaNet, de Waal said: 'It's one thing to kind of have pinpricks... and a little bit of instability suits [Azerbaijan]. But a major military offensive could blow back in their faces, particularly if the Armenian-Russian relations are a bit stronger, as it is at the moment.'

As tensions remain high, civilians living in the area are braced for further skirmishes between the two sides.

Arevik Margarian, 23, an Armenian, lives in a small village near the border with Azerbaijan. In June, she told the Guardian that she could sometime see Azeri soldiers on patrol from her window, and stray bullets have left pockmarks on her house.

Despite the tensions, she said she refused to leave, and continues to work as a teaching assistant at a local school for around £86 a month.

'I cannot imagine living somewhere else,' she said. 'Many leave, migrate, and it's natural. People want to find a better life, live better, but this is my home. Everything is familiar.'