In news– Azerbaijan has said it has established a checkpoint on the only land route to the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a step that was followed by claims of border shootings by both Azeri and Armenian forces.
About Nagorno-Karabakh-
- Nagorno-Karabakh, known as Artsakh by Armenians, is a landlocked mountainous area in the South Caucasus within the mountainous range of Karabakh, lying between Lower Karabakh and Syunik, and covering the southeastern range of the Lesser Caucasus mountains.
- It was claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917 and has remained a point of tension ever since.
- It is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but its 120,000 inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Armenians and the region broke away from Baku in a war in the early 1990s.
- Since the end of the war in 1994, representatives of the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group on the region’s disputed status.
Source: times of India
