Armenian state radio: “Turkey is recruiting and transporting foreign terrorist fighters to Azerbaijan.”

Fierce fighting erupted between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces on Sunday over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The battle raged for the second day, raising the death toll to 40, with hundreds reported injured on both sides.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave of about 1,700 square miles, is 30 miles from the Armenian border. Ethnic Armenians are in control of the territory since major hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan subsided in 1994. The conflict over the region has claimed 30,000 lives since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The conflict dates back to Soviet-era when Stalin redrew the map of the region, giving Christian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh to Muslim-dominated Azerbaijani. The dispute over the area heated up in the early 1990s as the Soviet empire began to crumble, and region ethnic Armenians demanded reunion with the newly independent nation of Armenia.

Turkey backs Azerbaijan in this conflict. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Twitter called on the “entire world to stand with Azerbaijan.” He also described Armenia as the “biggest threat to regional peace,” Turkish state media reported.

The Associated Press reported the escalating conflict:

Armenia and Azerbaijani forces kept fighting Monday over the disputed separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh after hostilities broke out the day before, with both sides blaming each other for resuming the deadly attacks that reportedly also wounded scores of people.

This article was sourced from LegalInsurrection