Six Russian peacekeepers mistakenly killed by Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh

Six Russian peacekeepers were killed and another was in injured in Nagorno-Karabakh on Thursday, Azerbaijan's Prosecutor General's Office has announced.

Five peacekeepers lost their lives after Azerbaijani forces shelled a vehicle having mistaken its passengers for members of “illegal Armenian groups”, the office said.

In a separate incident, one Russian peacekeeper was killed and another was injured when Karabakhi forces opened fire on truck, the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities claimed.

The deaths come amid an Azerbaijani military offensive aimed at bringing the breakaway South Caucasus region back under its control. A ceasefire has now been declared.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a self-proclaimed republic that is legally part of Azerbaijan but whose majority ethnic Armenian population broke away from Baku in the early 1990s.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev apologised to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Thursday for the deaths of Russian peacekeepers in the region and said that the national authorities would investigate the incidents. Aliev also said that he was willing to pay compensations to the families of the killed peacekeepers.