Azerbaijan has unearthed another mass grave containing the bodies of Azerbaijanis killed by Armenian forces during the First Karabakh War in the Khojavand district.

An Anadolu Agency (AA) team captured footage of the remains of 12 Azerbaijani people in the mass grave in the village of Edilli in the district.

Bullet holes found in the skulls indicated that they may have been executed by shooting.

Speaking to AA, Namiq Efendiyev, an official from Azerbaijan's State Commission for Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons, said that excavations have been ongoing in the region since February in an effort to find citizens who disappeared during the First Karabakh War which ended in 1994.

"A mass grave of Azerbaijani servicemen tortured and executed during the first Karabakh war was discovered in the village of Edilli," Hikmet Hajiyev, the foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, said Wednesday on Twitter.

He said, "4,000 Azerbaijani troops and civilians remain missing since the (1990s) war, and Armenia refuses to disclose the locations of mass graves."

Efendiyev said that "25 human remains were discovered since February at the mass grave".

In September, at least 286 people were killed on both sides before a U.S.-brokered truce ended the worst clashes since the neighbors' 2020 war.

On Sunday, Armenia's Foreign Ministry said "numerous videos regularly (published) by Azerbaijani users on social media demonstrate the war crimes", including extrajudicial killings and torture of Armenian POWs and desecration of corpses.

Azerbaijan said on the same day that its military prosecutor's office had launched a probe into alleged war crimes committed by Baku forces.

Relations between the former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Baku liberated several cities, villages and settlements from Armenian occupation over the course of 44 days in the fall of 2020 fall, with clashes ending after a Moscow-brokered truce. The peace agreement is celebrated as a triumph in Azerbaijan.

The six-week war in 2020 claimed the lives of more than 6,500 troops from both sides and ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire.

Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.

With Moscow increasingly isolated on the world stage following its February invasion of Ukraine, the United States and the European Union have taken a leading role in mediating the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization process.

On Sunday, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Geneva where they began drafting the text of a future peace treaty.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.

17 Armenian prisoners freed

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan freed 17 Armenian prisoners of war Tuesday following U.S. mediation, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said, days after the arch-foe neighbors re-launched Western-facilitated peace talks.

The move highlights the growing Western engagement in the volatile Caucasus region, where Russia distracted by its war in Ukraine is visibly losing influence after decades of domination.

"I highly appreciate the efforts of the United States (in) assisting to return our 17 POW," Pashinyan said Tuesday on Twitter.

He expressed hope for more "progress in resolving both humanitarian issues and establishing peace in the region" with international mediation.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is traveling in Latin America, initiated a three-way telephone conversation Tuesday with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov.

Blinken hailed the release of the prisoners and "reiterated our commitment to helping Armenia and Azerbaijan resolve issues peacefully," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.

Blinken also "expressed our appreciation for the positive steps Armenia and Azerbaijan are taking towards reaching a sustainable peace agreement."

The Azerbaijani and Armenian ministers met jointly with Blinken on September 20 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, and the two held talks again together on Sunday in Geneva.

The Geneva talks followed an EU-mediated meeting on August 31 in Brussels between Pashinyan and Aliyev.