Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

When the international community cherishes fundamental values of Novruz such as peace and understanding, Armenia demonstrates its true face and continues to violate ceasefire, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev wrote on Twitter on March 22.

“When world community cherishes fundamental values of Novruz such as peace and understanding and people of Azerbaijan celebrate centuries old traditions of Novruz, Armenia demonstrates its true face and continues to violate ceasefire,” he noted, adding that Armenia violated the ceasefire 98 times on March 22 and 101 times on March 21.

Moreover, the aggressors violated the ceasefire 93 times over the past 24 hours using large-caliber machine guns. The Azerbaijani army positions located in the Gaymagli and Gushchu Ayrim villages of the Gazakh region and in the Agbulag village of the Tovuz region underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located in Armenia. The Azerbaijani army positions were also shelled from the Armenian positions located in the occupied villages and on nameless heights of the Tartar, Aghdam, Khojavand, Fuzuli and Jabrayil regions.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions.

Hajiyev also noted on Twitter that Armenia’s policy of environmental terror must be stopped. He pointed out that March 22 is the World Water Day, adding that availability and management of water is one of the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Armenia continues the occupation of Azerbaijan's lands including Sarsang reservoir and pursues a policy of environmental terror and deliberate contamination of rivers,” said Hajiyev, adding that this policy must be condemned.

Numerous monitoring conducted by Azerbaijan's relevant bodies in order to examine the pollution level of the transboundary river Araz and its tributaries revealed that the amount of biogenic substances is several times above the norm. The reason for this is the discharge of untreated domestic wastes and sewage from industrial facilities into water in the territory of Armenia.

Waste thrown into the Araz river is extremely harmful. The heavy metals and other hazardous, toxic, and radioactive wastes brought by the Okhchuchay river, which takes its beginning from the Armenian territory, pollute the Araz river. Following Araz’s flowing into the Kura river, these hazardous materials in turn pollute Kura, which is the main source of drinkable water for majority of Azerbaijani regions.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz