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Since the beginning of armed hostilities in Nagorno Karabakh there have been widespread reports of forces indiscriminately shelling and using other explosive weapons against civilian populated areas, Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect reported in its Atrocity Alert No. 223 issue.

The source recalls UN data saying at least 40 civilians have been killed and more than 200 wounded, although the intense fighting has prevented monitors from verifying casualty figures. Thousands of civilians have also attempted to flee the area, while others have taken shelter underground in basements due to shelling and drone strikes.

Civilian homes and essential infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, have already been damaged or destroyed by the fighting.

The source recalls Amnesty International's corroborated video footage showing that Israeli-made cluster munitions appear to have been fired by Azerbaijani forces on residential areas of Stepanakert. The use of cluster munitions is banned under IHL and the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of such weapons is prohibited under the Convention on Cluster Munitions. These illegal weapons have “wide area affects” and leave explosive remnants that indiscriminately wound and kill both combatants and civilians.

"There are also credible reports that Turkey is sending Syrian mercenaries to support Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that at least 72 Syrian fighters have already been killed. Turkish military involvement in the conflict also threatens to heighten religious and ethnic tensions, especially given the history of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during World War One," said the source.

"The expansion and intensification of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh poses a grave threat to all civilians within the conflict zone, as well as to those in nearby cities of Armenia and Azerbaijan," said the authors of the report.

To note, Atrocity Alert is a weekly publication by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect highlighting situations where populations are at risk of, or are enduring, mass atrocity crimes.