the armenian-azerbaijan conflict. © Reuters
Armenia's Ministry of Defense in the Nagorno-Karabakh region said on Wednesday it had recorded 40 new military deaths. That brings the total military death toll to 280 since fighting with Azeri forces broke out on September 27, the Interfax news agency reported.
The region has faced deadly fighting in more than 25 years between ethnic Armenians and Azeri, Azerbaijan forces.
Quoted from Alarabiya, Wednesday (7/10), Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an end to fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. He called the battle a tragedy.
Speaking in an interview with state television, Putin said he was in constant communication with the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan on the conflict.
He also emphasized what he called tough anti-Russian rhetoric from US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, but said he was encouraged by Biden's comments on gun control.
Putin said Russia would cooperate with whoever the US president was.
In late September, at least 24 people were killed after deadly clashes between two arch-enemies, Armenia and Azerbaijan, when the latest violence broke out in a long-running border dispute sparking international calls on Sunday to stop fighting.
The worst clashes since 2016 have raised the specter of a new war between the former Soviet rivals, locked since the early 1990s in a standoff over the Armenia-backed Nagorny Karabakh region.
Seventeen Armenian separatist fighters were killed and more than 100 wounded in the fighting, said Karabakh President Arayik Harutyunyan, who acknowledged that his troops had "lost their positions".
Both sides also reported civilian casualties.
"We are tired of Azerbaijan's threat, we will fight to the death to solve this problem for good," Artak Bagdasaryan, 36, told AFP in Yerevan, reported by AFP on Monday (28/9).
Bagdasaryan added that he was waiting to be drafted into the army.
Separatists Karabakh said an Armenian woman and a child were killed, while Baku said an Azerbaijani family of five died in the shooting carried out by Armenian separatists.
Azerbaijan claims to have captured a strategic mountain in Karabakh which helps control transport links between Yerevan and the enclave.
Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said Karabakh rebel forces killed "about 200 Azerbaijani soldiers and destroyed 30 enemy artillery units and 20 drones".