Artsakh military reports 54 more KIA amid Azerbaijani attacks as death toll mounts to 157

Artsakh says 54 more of its troops have been killed in action in the ongoing Azerbaijani attacks.

“Unfortunately, 54 soldiers of the Defense Army gave their lives in defending their country,” the Deputy Commander of the Artsakh Defense Army Artur Sargsyan told a news briefing on October 2.

He said the number of wounded servicemen is being clarified.

The number of Artsakhi servicemen killed in action since September 27 reached 157.

As of October 1 the number of wounded troops in Artsakh stood at 120.

Azerbaijani armed forces launched a massive military attack on Artsakh on September 27. Since then, 11 civilians have been killed and more than 60 were wounded amid Azeri bombardments of towns and cities of Artsakh. Amid the ongoing Turkish-backed attack on Artsakh, the Azeri forces also began attacking Armenia, killing a civilian and bombing a passenger bus in the town of Vardenis.

A Turkish F-16 shot down an Armenian Armed Forces SU-25 jet in Armenian airspace on September 29.

Then, on October 1, the Azeri forces shelled the Shatvan village of Armenia, and attacked the Mets Masrik village with a combat drone, killing one civilian and wounding two others. Several Azeri recon drones breached the Armenian airspace and were shot down near Yerevan late on October 1.

On October 1 the authorities said that Azeri forces lost nearly 1300 servicemen since the beginning of the attack. The Azeri military also suffered huge losses of equipment – 95 UAVs, 12 gunships, 181 tanks and armored equipment, 5 warplanes, 2 Smerch and 3 TOS1A heavy artillery systems.