A team consisting of reporters from Turkey's Anadolu Agency (AA) and public broadcaster TRT have survived an Armenian attack targeting Azerbaijani settlements Sunday.
While in the region covering the conflict, the journalists soon found themselves under the fire of Armenian artillerymen during the early morning hours. After multiple artillery rounds, bullets started to be fired up to within 100 meters (328 feet) of the journalists' location. The crews immediately jumped into their vehicles to escape unscathed.
As artillery fire continued, the crew rapidly moved away from the area.
Turkish journalists targeted by Armenian artillery fire escape with their lives in last-minute dash https://t.co/iSNtxJBHrr pic.twitter.com/9rwjH1mAaa
— DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) September 27, 2020
Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said early Sunday that Armenia had launched large-scale attacks against civilians and military positions, with Baku launching retaliatory operations along the "contact line," a heavily mined no-man's-land that separates Armenian-backed forces from Azerbaijani troops in the region.
The two former Soviet countries have long been in conflict over the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is under illegal Armenian occupation, with border clashes intensifying in recent months.
Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh declared so-called independence during a conflict that broke out as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Though a cease-fire was agreed in 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia frequently accuse each other of attacks around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the separate Azerbaijani-Armenian frontier.
