Azerbaijan says it has begun a military operation in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The territory is recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan but large areas of it have been controlled by ethnic Armenians for three decades.
Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies in the mountainous South Caucasus region, is at the heart of one of the world’s longest-running conflicts.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a bloody war over the territory in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it has been the trigger for further violence in the years since.
The last major escalation in the conflict took place in 2020 when thousands of people were reported killed in six weeks of fierce fighting.
