Baku, Azerbaijan, July 6
Trend:
Donald Shooter, a US politician and a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, has sent an open letter to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan over the death of an Azerbaijani two year old girl and her grandmother as the result of the recent Armenian provocation on the contact line between the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend July 6.
“Murdering innocent civilians, let alone children, is absolutely unacceptable in any circumstance, constituting a serious violation of international humanitarian and human rights law,” said the letter.
“The ongoing military occupation of around 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory by Armenia, which has led to the total ethnic cleansing of all the occupied areas of around 800,000 Azerbaijani civilians, is one of the darkest pages in the modern European history,” Shooter said in his letter.
The Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains the largest threat to stability in the South Caucasus region, according to the letter.
Shooter called on the Armenian president to harshly condemn the killing of a 2 year-old child and her grandmother and to launch a serious investigation in order to find and bring to justice the culprits behind this horrific act and heinous crime.
Shooter also urged Sargsyan to take all necessary measures to make sure that such tragic incidents are never repeated again.
On July 4 at about 20:40 (GMT+4 hours), the Armenian armed forces, using 82-mm and 120-mm mortars and grenade launchers, shelled the Alkhanli village of Azerbaijan’s Fuzuli district.
As a result of this provocation, the residents of the village Sahiba Allahverdiyeva, 50, and Zahra Guliyeva, 2, were killed. Salminaz Guliyeva, 52, who got wounded, was taken to the hospital and was operated on.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
