Azerbaijan claims seizing key Nagorno-Karabakh city

Azerbaijan's defence ministry on Monday shared footage of the city of Shushi, which it claims to have captured.

President Ilham Aliyev said Sunday that Azerbaijani forces had taken control of the strategically important city in Nagorno-Karabakh, where fighting with Armenia has raged for over a month.

Shushi is of significant military value because it sits on heights about 10 kilometers (six miles) south of the region's capital of Stepanakert and lies along the main road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.

Along with its strategic value, Shushi is culturally significant as a onetime center of Azerbaijani culture, noted for music and poetry.

Armenian authorities said its forces repelled attacks targeted at the towns of Martuni, Martakert and Tagavard.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian government since 1994 at the end of a separatist war following the breakup of the Soviet Union three years earlier.

The latest outbreak of fighting started on September 27 and has left hundreds, if not thousands, dead.