[JURIST] Azerbaijan on Sunday announced a “unilateral ceasefire” to the fighting with Armenian forces over the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh. The announcement comes a day after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [official profile] called for [UN news report] an immediate end to the fighting between the two countries, as there have been reports of increased fighting and large-scale ceasefire violations along the Line of Contact in the region. The fighting had continued [BBC report] until Sunday, which up until that point had led to the deaths of 30 soldiers and civilian casualties. Ban stated [statement] that he was particularly concerned with the use of heavy weapons and by the large numbers of casualties.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been a territory under dispute [BBC backgrounder] between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the two countries became independent in the early 1990’s. The area, located within Azerbaijan but made up of a majority Armenian ethnicity population, is landlocked by mountains and has been contended for by the two sides since the 19th century. In 1988 a war was fought between the two sides which left the area in the hands of Armenia with a tentative truce signed in 1994. However, negotiations since have failed to produce a permanent peace agreement. In 2010, Turkey expressed its support for Azerbaijan, as Armenia continues to allege that Turkey committed genocide [JURIST report] during the time of the Ottoman era in the early 1900s.