Six Russian peacekeepers were killed and another was in injured in Nagorno-Karabakh on Thursday, Azerbaijan's Prosecutor General's Office has announced.
Five peacekeepers lost their lives after Azerbaijani forces shelled a vehicle having mistaken its passengers for members of “illegal Armenian groups”, the office said.
In a separate incident, one Russian peacekeeper was killed and another was injured when Karabakhi forces opened fire on truck, the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities claimed.
The deaths come amid an Azerbaijani military offensive aimed at bringing the breakaway South Caucasus region back under its control. A ceasefire has now been declared.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a self-proclaimed republic that is legally part of Azerbaijan but whose majority ethnic Armenian population broke away from Baku in the early 1990s.