Azerbaijan’s defence ministry says it has begun “anti-terrorist” operations in its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, under Armenian control.

Tensions have been high for months surrounding the ethnic Armenian enclave, recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan.

Eleven Azerbaijani police and civilians have been reported killed in a mine blast and another incident.

Air raid sirens have been reported in Karabakh’s main city.

The two neighbours, Azerbaijan and Armenia, have gone to war twice over Nagorno-Karabakh, first in the early 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union and again in 2020.

Since December, Azerbaijan has mounted a de facto blockade of the only route into the enclave from Armenia, known as the Lachin Corridor.