Why new fighting in Azerbaijan’s troubled region may herald a new war

By JIM HEINTZ
Associated Press

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Azerbaijan’s launch of reportedly intense artillery firing in the Nagorno-Karabakh region has raised fears that another full-scale conflict with Armenia could be underway. The new fighting on Tuesday came less than three years after a war that killed more than 6,000 people. Nagorno-Karabakh has a population of about 120,000. It’s an ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan that has been a flashpoint since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The region and sizable surrounding territories came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian military at the 1994 end of a separatist war. Azerbaijan regained the territories and parts of Nagorno-Karakh itself in fighting in 2020.