Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of killing at least 13 civilians and wounding 50 others in a ballistic missile strike. The Armenian Defense Ministry has denied striking Azerbaijan’s second largest city, Ganja, yesterday.

A Jazeera reports that about 20 residential buildings in Ganja were destroyed or damaged in the Soviet-made Scud missile attack overnight. Emergency workers spent hours searching in the rubble for victims and survivors.

According to Al Jazeera Scud missiles carry a big load of explosives but are have no accuracy in hitting their targets.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, condemned the missile strike as a war crime. He said Armenia’s leaders would face responsibility. Aliyev added, “Azerbaijan will give its response and it will do so exclusively on the battlefield.”

Aliyev announced Saturday that Azerbaijani forces have taken the town of Fizuli and seven villages around it. The town lies outside Nagorno-Karabakh. It had been seized by Armenian forces during the war in the early 1990s. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since 1994.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister of Turkey, which is an ally of Azerbaijan, Hulusi Akar congratulated his counterpart in Azerbaijan, for “liberating Fizuli from the (Armenian) occupation”.

Umm Muhammed Umar