⁍ Azerbaijan said 21 people were killed when Armenian shells hit the town of Barda.

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⁍ Armenian-backed officials in Nagorno-Karabakh said Azeri shells had fallen on the enclave’s two largest cities.

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⁍ Both sides denied each other’s claims.

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⁍ The worst fighting in the South Caucasus for nearly 30 years has raised fears of a wider war.

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– The worst fighting in the South Caucasus for nearly 30 years has raised fears of a wider war that could suck in Russia and Turkey, an ally of Azerbaijan. It also poses a threat to pipelines carrying oil and gas from Azerbaijan to world markets. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had witnessed shelling in urban areas on both sides of the front line Wednesday, in an escalation of a month-long conflict over the mountain enclave that has defied three ceasefires. Azerbaijan said 21 people were killed when Armenian shells hit the town of Barda, northeast of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian-backed officials in Nagorno-Karabakh said Azeri shells had fallen on the enclave’s two largest cities, killing one person. Both sides denied each other’s claims, reports Reuters. The worst fighting in the South Caucasus for nearly 30 years has raised fears of a wider war that could suck in Russia and Turkey, an ally of Azerbaijan. It also poses a threat to pipelines carrying oil and gas from Azerbaijan to world markets. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had witnessed shelling in urban areas on both sides of the front line. It said a volunteer from the Azerbaijan Red Crescent Society had been killed and two others injured in the shelling. “These latest exchanges signal that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict risks spiralling out of control,’ Martin Schuepp, the ICRC’s Eurasia regional director, said in a statement. “Civilian lives are being lost at an alarming rate.”