Azerbaijan & ethnic Armenian forces reach cease-fire deal for breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh

Talks between Azerbaijani officials and the region's ethnic Armenian authorities on its "re-integration" into Azerbaijan were scheduled to take place on Thursday

Azerbaijan and Armenian forces reached a cease-fire agreement Wednesday to end two days of fighting in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region that has been a flashpoint for decades, officials on both sides said.

An hour after the truce was announced, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the intensity of the hostilities in the region "has decreased drastically." Azerbaijani authorities said they had halted the military operation launched a day earlier once separatist officials announced laying down arms.

But it wasn't immediately clear if some fighting continued.

On Tuesday, Azerbaijan unleashed heavy artillery fire on Armenian positions in Nagorno-Karabakh-amoun-

tainous a region that is part of Azerbaijan and came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces during a separatist war in the 1990s.

Scores of people were reportedly killed and wounded in the latest fighting. The hostilities also exacerbated an already grim humanitarian situation for residents who have suffered food shortages for months.

The escalation raised concerns that a full-scale war in the region could resume between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have been locked in a struggle over the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The most recent heavy fighting occurred over six weeks in 2020, when Azerbaijan retook parts of the region and areas around it that were lost in the earlier separatist war.