Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Wednesday (December 9th) of having used prohibited weapons containing white phosphorus, a banned munition, during recent fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Read also: Karabakh: 2,783 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in the fighting
Major hostilities resumed at the end of September between Baku and separatists supported by Yerevan in this mountainous territory which seceded from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. The clashes, which left more than 5,000 dead, ended in November by a humiliating defeat of the Armenian forces in Karabakh, forced to cede important territories.
The separatist authorities' human rights official, Artak Beglarian, said his team had gathered "
abundant evidence that Azerbaijan used phosphorus munitions
" during the six weeks of fighting.
At the same time, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense rejected these claims, accusing in return the Armenians of having used these weapons.
“
The Azerbaijani army has no phosphorus ammunition.
We could not use what we did not have
”, assured a spokesman of the ministry, Vaguif Diargahly, adding that“
Armenia had used bombs with phosphorus against us
”.
In a hospital in Yerevan, AFP journalists saw wounded soldiers suffering from severe burns which they claimed were caused by Azerbaijani phosphorus weapons.
“
It was a drone attack on October 3.
I have serious burns (...) and I learned that traces of phosphorus had been found in my body
”, testified Meroujan Kotchinian, a 19-year-old soldier.
Another soldier of the same age, Vardgues Ovakimian, claimed that his burns were slowly resolving "
because there was phosphorus on my wounds
".
According to the assistant director of the hospital, Karine Babaian, these injuries could have been caused by phosphorus or another "
chemical agent
".
In November, the director of the Azerbaijani National Mine Action Agency (ANAMA) also reported the use of phosphorus against troops in Baku.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani branches of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) declined to comment in detail on this subject.
The ICRC "is
conducting confidential discussions with the parties to the conflict regarding allegations of violations of international humanitarian law and the rules of war,
" said Ilaha Gouseïnova, a representative of the Red Cross in Baku.
SEE ALSO
- Nagorno-Karabakh: should France make more commitments?