Armenia on Tuesday said that a Turkish fighter jet had shot down one of its warplanes during heavy fighting with Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan, but Ankara denied the claim.
Direct Turkish military action against Armenia would mark a major escalation after three days of heavy fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh.
The UN Security Council called on both sides for an immediate end to the fighting.
Photo: AFP
The two sides have defied calls for a ceasefire over Karabakh — an ethnic-Armenian enclave that broke from Azerbaijan in the 1990s — and are both claiming to have inflicted heavy losses on opposing forces.
Ankara has backed Azerbaijan in the conflict and on Tuesday the Armenian Ministry of Defense said that a Turkish F-16 flying in support of Baku’s forces had downed an Armenian Su-25 warplane.
Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan said that the Turkish jet was supporting Azerbaijani aviation bombing civilian settlements in Armenia when it shot down the Armenian plane, killing the pilot.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top press aide Fahrettin Altun called the claim “absolutely untrue.”
“Armenia should withdraw from the territories under its occupation instead of resorting to cheap propaganda tricks,” Altun said.
“There is not a shred of evidence of Turkey’s participation in the conflict,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said.
Ankara was giving only moral support, Aliyev said.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked for decades in a territorial dispute over Karabakh and have blamed each other for sparking fierce clashes that erupted on Sunday and have since caused nearly 100 confirmed deaths.
Foreign powers including the US and Russia have called for an immediate ceasefire and a return to negotiations over the future of Karabakh, talks that have been stalled for years.
On Tuesday, the UN Security Council called on both sides to “immediately stop fighting.”
Earlier, Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had vowed to continue fighting, their armies claiming to have dealt heavy blows to enemy forces.
The Armenian defense ministry said that separatist forces in Karabakh had repelled Azerbaijani attacks along the front line and that “the enemy suffered serious losses in manpower.”
It said that Azerbaijan’s military had lost 72 drones, seven helicopters, 137 tanks, a plane and 82 military vehicles since Sunday.
In Baku, officials denied that Armenian-backed separatists had regained control of territory lost in Sunday’s fighting.
Azerbaijan said that its military had repelled an Armenian counterattack and destroyed a motorized column, an artillery unit and, later, an entire motorized infantry regiment.
Russia President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday spoke by telephone with Pashinyan at the request of the latter.
Putin said that there was an “urgent need for a ceasefire.”
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