ARMENIA and Azerbaijan accused each other of breaking a ceasefire just minutes after it was agreed in Moscow on Saturday as conflict between the two nations continued to escalate.

A fragile Russian-brokered truce was agreed between both parties to allow Armenian and Azeri forces to swap prisoners and bodies of those killed in the conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the ceasefire had been agreed on humanitarian grounds and would be aided by agencies including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“The specific terms of the ceasefire still need to be agreed,” he said on Saturday.

It is understood that the warring countries also agreed to what Mr Lavrov described as “substantive peace talks” which would be mediated by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE’s) Minsk group.

But both sides accused the other of breaking the agreement with Azerbaijan claiming that Armenia had shelled its second-largest city Ganja, killing seven civilians.

Armenia denied the claims warning that Azerbaijan and its allies had launched drone and missile attacks against civilian targets in a number of cities in the disputed region.

Azerbaijan has insisted any ceasefire would be brief and it would continue its aggression once it had collected its dead.

President Ilham Aliyev said: “We’ll go to the very end and get what rightfully belongs to us.”

Amnesty International has accused Azerbaijan of war crimes against civilians after it confirmed the use of banned Israeli-made cluster bombs in the regional capital Stepanakert.

“The use of cluster bombs in any circumstances is banned under international humanitarian law, so their use to attack civilian areas is particularly dangerous and will only lead to further deaths and injuries,” Amnesty spokesman Denis Krivosheev said following publication of its report last week.

Nagorno-Karabakh President Arayik Harutyunyan said hostilities had reduced on the second day of the ceasefire but warned that the truce remained fragile.

“It seems that since this morning it is calmer, but that can change very quickly,” he said at a press conference today.

He again slammed Israel for its arms sales to Azerbaijan and accused it of complicity in the attempted genocide of the Armenian people.

“All the countries that support Azerbaijan support international terrorism and they will have to answer to humanity and before God,” he said.

Disputes between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the region date back to before they became Soviet republics in the 1920s and erupted again as the Soviet Union began to fall apart in the late 1980s.

A six-year war over the Nagorno-Karabakh region ended in 1994 and the Armenian majority voted to join Yerevan in a referendum boycotted by Azerbaijan.