Word: stepanakert
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...exaggerated. Azeris are ethnic cousins of the Turks, and in Karabakh today some Armenian soldiers claim they are continuing the historic battle. "For the Azeris, the only solution is to rid Karabakh of all Armenians, just like the Turks in 1915," says Artur, one such freedom fighter in Stepanakert. "But we won't let that happen again...
...launched efforts to resolve the conflict. The first cease-fire brokered by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati collapsed within a few hours. The second one lasted for several days, with both sides reporting relatively minor violations. That was long enough for U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance to visit Stepanakert on a fact-finding mission late last month and to declare his hope that third-party mediation could help bring peace...
...early last week artillery shells cascaded in violent waves upon Stepanakert. From mid-morning until after nightfall, the city rattled to the thunderous explosions of 157 GRAD missiles, highly destructive artillery- launched shells. Karabakh leaders said more than 500 Azeri troops had moved down the mountain from Shusha to attack Stepanakert's outskirts. At a makeshift hospital on the first floor of the city's former Communist Party headquarters, doctors operated throughout the shelling as jeeps and ambulances arrived carrying the wounded. In the building's foyer, an old woman stared in grief at the body of her dead...
...Azeri government denied that an attack had taken place and accused the Armenians in Karabakh of breaking the cease-fire. Even in Stepanakert, it was impossible to tell for sure who had started the fighting that raged just a kilometer from city limits. But the GRAD bombardment on the city was no illusion. Nor was the stream of dead and wounded. By day's end nine Armenian soldiers had been killed in battle, three civilians in the shelling. More than 30 people had been wounded. After nightfall, the Karabakh Defense Minister, Serge Sarkisian, said the offensive had been turned back...
...Russians have left, and the Soviet Union has disappeared. But the fighting in Karabakh continues, and the death toll rises. The suffering is indiscriminate, with innocent civilians afflicted as often as warriors. Last week, as rockets could be heard falling once again on Stepanakert a few miles away, a small plane landed to evacuate wounded to Yerevan, the Armenian capital. A stretcher bearing a woman in her 50s, her face scarred and swollen, was lifted aboard. She had lost both her legs to a GRAD missile the night before. Her husband, pale and exhausted, said nothing as he bent down...