Armenian father tells of life under daily bombings

The father of two sons fighting in Stepanakert in Nagorno-Karabakh said on Friday he hoped for international pressure to be put on to bring an end to a conflict which has raged in the region for nearly two weeks.

Eduard Akojanian looked around the wreckage of houses in the city, destroyed by shelling following the latest outburst of fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces.

He was later forced to run and seek shelter as sirens rang out and explosions echoed around the city

"The whole world must intervene. Russia, France, America. They must stop Azerbaijan, Turkey and Erdogan. The whole city is bombed, our whole Artsakh is destroyed," he said.

Stepanakert is the capital of self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh or Republic of Artsakh as Armenians refer to it.

Akojanian said both his sons were fighting on the frontline and he hadn't heard from his eldest in ten days.

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

Russia moved to stop the fighting on Friday by hosting cease-fire talks.

The Kremlin said Putin's initiative followed a series of calls with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

Armenia said it's open to holding a cease-fire, while Azerbaijan has made a potential truce conditional on the Armenian forces' withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh, arguing that the failure of international efforts to negotiate a settlement left it no other choice but to try to reclaim its lands by force.

(Representative Image)