Two Nagorno-Karabakh boys, who were injured after shells landed near a school in a recent escalation in the region which is disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, are in a stable condition after surgery. RT visited them at a hospital in Stepanakert.
Escalation of hostilities in disputed Nagorno-KarabakhLIVE UPDATES
“We were heading to the school when suddenly there was a blast. I fell. We started calling for help and then were brought to the hospital,” one of the wounded boys told RT’s Murad Gazdiev.
According to the child, he received a serious thigh injury in the attack, saying he “fractured my right leg in many places.”
"There were two shots. We could not make it to the shelter and got hit," another injured boy, who also suffered a multi-fragment fracture, recalled.
The doctors said that both young patients were operated on and remain in a stable condition, with their lives now out of danger.
Earlier, Nagorno-Karabakh officials said that a boy of around the age of 12 was killed and two other children wounded as Azerbaijani forces shelled a school in the border area early on Saturday.
The Azerbaijan Prosecutor's Office has also reported civilian casualties on their side, saying that two people were killed and ten more injured.
The violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway Azeri region with a predominantly Armenian population that fought an independence war in the 1990s, escalated on Friday night.
Sporadic clashes along the engagement line reportedly continued on Sunday despite the effort of the OSCE Minsk group, which is tasked with preserving the truce in the conflict zone.
Baku and Yerevan accused each other of provoking hostilities. It remains unclear which party triggered the latest round of escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan said it lost 12 troops, a helicopter and a tank, while Armenia claims 18 ethnic-Armenian troops died in the fighting.
On Sunday, the Azeri side announced a unilateral cessation of hostilities, but reports from Nagorno-Karabakh claim that the fighting is ongoing despite the move.