Pope Francis expressed his regret over the fighting on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan and called for the ceasefire to be respected in order to reach a peace agreement.
The Pope, after praying the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, expressed his spiritual closeness to the victims of both countries and said that peace can only be achieved when “weapons are silenced and dialogue begins.”
During his recent trip to Kazakhstan, between September 13 and 15, the Pope had already expressed his concern about “new sources of tension in the Caucasus region”.
In the Vatican, after praying the Angelus, the Pope also asked for prayers for the “martyred Ukraine” and appealed for peace in this country and in all corners of the world where there is war.
As for Armenia and Azerbaijan, the two countries accuse each other of sporadic and recurring border attacks.
Azerbaijani authorities attributed the clashes, which broke out on September 13, to a “large-scale provocation” by Armenia and have already caused more than 200 deaths.
At least 135 Armenian soldiers killed in clashes on the border with Azerbaijan
Meanwhile, already today, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, condemned today in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, Azerbaijan’s “deadly attacks” against Armenian territory.
“On behalf of Congress, we strongly condemn Azerbaijan’s deadly attacks on Armenian territory,” Pelosi said at the joint news conference with Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan.
Armenia and Azerbaijan declared their independence in 1991 and the beginning of the conflict, which has intensified in recent months, has focused on the enclave of Nagorno-Kharabak, a region in Azerbaijani territory, today inhabited almost exclusively by Armenians (Orthodox Christians), which declared independence from Muslim Azerbaijan after a war in the early 1990s that left some 30,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Source: Observadora
