Soldiers in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, the region over which Armenia and Azerbaijan are waging a continuing struggle. The conflict has escalated with deadly ferocity in recent months, killing dozens of soldiers on each side and pushing the countries perilously close to open war.”
AGDAM, Azerbaijan — Overshadowed by the fighting in Ukraine, another armed conflict in the former Soviet Union — between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh — has escalated with deadly ferocity in recent months, killing dozens of soldiers on each side and pushing the countries perilously close to open war.
The month of January was heavily stained by blood, with repeated gun battles and volleys of artillery and rocket fire. Two Armenian soldiers were killed and several wounded in a fierce gunfight on Jan. 23 along the conflict’s northern front. That set off a weekend of violence including grenade and mortar attacks that killed at least three Azerbaijani soldiers.
The most recent clashes prompted an unusually pointed rebuke by international mediators who met on Monday in Krakow, Poland, with the Azerbaijani foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov.
“The rise in violence that began last year must stop,” the mediators, from France, Russia and the United States, said in a joint statement, adding, “We called on Azerbaijan to observe its commitments to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. We also called on Armenia to take all measures to reduce tensions.”
Instead, the violence has continued.
On Thursday, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said it had shot down a drone not far from Agdam, an Azerbaijani city that was once home to more than 40,000 people but has been a ghost town for more than 20 years since its occupation by Armenian forces.
Tensions are expected to grow even further this year as Armenia prepares to commemorate in April the 100th anniversary of the genocide against Armenians in Turkey.
While the fighting here often seems to be an isolated dispute over a mountainous patch of land that no one else wants — roughly midway between the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and the Azerbaijani capital, Baku — the conflict poses an ever-present danger by threatening to draw in bigger powers, including Russia, Turkey and Iran.
It also provides a chilling warning of what could be in store for Ukraine, where many fear Russia is intent on turning the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk into a similar permanent war zone.
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“The reality is after 20 years of inflammatory rhetoric, both presidents will admit to you that the people of the two countries are just not ready,” said one Western official who has met both men, and who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations on sensitive diplomatic issues.
In Azerbaijan, tens of thousands of refugees live in substandard housing. In some cases, families have lived for years in individual college dormitory rooms, sharing a bathroom on the hall.
Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh are hamstrung by their unrecognized status, which prohibits most international trade.
The region’s capital, called Stepanakert in Armenian and Xankendi in Azerbaijani, has no functioning airport. And officials there do not have a formal role in the peace process.
Irina Khachaturyan, who sells trinkets from a stall in the central market in Stepanakert, is Armenian but said she dreamed of returning to Baku, the Azerbaijani capital where she lived before the war.
“It was my motherland; I was born there, lived there, studied there,” Ms. Khachaturyan said.
Although she lives among fellow Armenians, she said Stepanakert never became home.
“I never found my place,” she said. “These 25 years, I have been living like on needles.”
Alexandra Odynova contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 2015, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Clashes Intensify Between Armenia and Azerbaijan Over Disputed Land. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
