AZERBAIJANI forces have taken control of the strategically important city of Shushi in Nagorno-Karabakh, where fighting with Armenia has raged for more than a month, the country’s president claimed today.

In a TV address to the nation, Ilham Aliyev said: “Shusha is ours — Karabakh is ours,” using the Azerbaijani version of the city’s name.

But  after Mr Aliyev’s claim, Armenian Defence Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said on Facebook that “fighting in Shushi is continuing. Wait and believe in our troops.”

Shushi is of significant military value as it sits on heights about six miles south of the region’s capital Stepanakert and lies on the main road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.

The disputed region is officially within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994.

The latest outbreak of fighting started on September 27 and has left hundreds — if not thousands — dead.
Mr Aliyev vowed to continue the fighting until Armenia withdraws from the territory and Azerbaijan’s chief ally Turkey welcomed the claimed victory.

“The joy of our Azerbaijani brothers who liberated their occupied cities and Karabakh step by step is also our joy,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a rally in the north-western city of Kocaeli. 

Both former Soviet states, Azerbaijan and Armenia have  been at daggers since the break-up of the Soviet Union, but the history of the region is deeply drenched in the bloodshed of ethnic and religious disputes — Turkey has resisted widespread calls for it to recognise the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915-16 as genocide.