The attacks on Ganja, a city of roughly 332,000 people are “a new manifestation of Armenia's unlawful attitude,” the Foreign Ministry in Ankara commented on Sunday. Azerbaijan's second-largest city saw a string of rocket artillery strikes earlier on Sunday, with projectiles causing damage to numerous buildings and setting fire across the area.

“Facing defeat in the territories of Azerbaijan it occupies, Armenia violates all principles of humanitarian law, especially the Geneva Conventions,” the ministry said in a statement, referring to the legally binding agreements that prohibit targeting civilians in wartime and mandate its signatories to avoid hurting non-combatants at all cost.   

Earlier, Baku said one civilian had been killed and 32 wounded in the city, accusing Armenia of shelling Ganja from inside their own territory. Yerevan has dismissed the allegations that it opened fire from its territory. In a separate twist, it accused Azerbaijani forces of firing rockets on Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh's major city, where damages and casualties were reported earlier in the day.

Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian-populated enclave landlocked inside Azerbaijani territory, unilaterally ceded from Azerbaijan back in the early 1990s following a major war. Baku insists the region was illegally occupied.

A major military confrontation between Yerevan and Baku – stuck in the decades-old semi-frozen conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh – broke out last Sunday. Since then, Ankara reassured its unwavering support for the “brotherly” Azerbaijan, offering both military and diplomatic assistance. Turkish leaders have also brushed aside calls for talks from France, Russia and the US – the countries leading the international effort in Karabakh peace process – insisting that only an Armenian withdrawal from the disputed region will end the fighting.

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