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President Serzh Sargsyan will convene a meeting of the country's National Security Council today in the evening, according to the press statement from the Office of the President.

The Council is expected discuss the growing escalation and violence along the Line of Contact following the unprecedented offensive carried out by the Azerbaijani armed forces since the night of April 2, as well as “other questions” about the situation, according to the official press release.

Earlier in the morning, Vladimir Hakobyan, the Press Secretary of the President of Armenia, spoke to Tert.am news portal and confirmed that “President Serzh Sargsyan had been briefed incontinently about the escalation of the situation on the Line of Contact en route from the United States” and the Air Force One was expected to land in Yerevan “in the next hours”.

In various directions along the Line of Contact, which is “turned into a battlefield now”, the units of NKR Defense Army have destroyed three tanks, two drones and one more military helicopter on top of the other one, confirmed in earlier in the morning – according to verified intelligence data published by the NKR Ministry of Defense.

“The local Armenian forces [in Nagorno Karabakh] inflicted considerable losses on the adversary and threw the offensive back, now in full control of the situation. The state bodies of the Republic of Armenia are ready to undertake all necessary steps in order to stabilize the situation using all their capacities”, - Hovik Abrahamyan, the Prime-Minister of Armenia said in a meeting with Cabinet members in the morning of April 2 following the reports of intensified violence and large-scale offensive by the Azerbaijani armed forces on the Line of Contact between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan.

Deputy Defense Minister David Tonoyan reported in the emergency meeting in the Government that the ongoing situation on the Line of Contact has been “unprecedented” ever since the establishment of ceasefire regime since May 1994.

The Armenian Ministry of Defense in an official statement already acknowledged the recent reports on the escalation on the Line of Contact between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijani troops and called upon the co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group to make “addressed intervention without delay in order to keep the situation under control and escape larger scale military actions”.

The Ministry vowed “unexpected consequences” in the absence of such measures.

The Azerbaijani news portal haqqin.az, closely affiliated with the country’s President office, has confirmed in a news report that the offensive had been initiated by the armed forces of Azerbaijan in the night of April 2.