Pars Today

Azerbaijan has released more than a dozen Armenian prisoners in exchange for maps of tens of thousands of mines planted in conflict zones separating the two neighbors.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday that more than 15 ethnic Armenians had been handed over to Yerevan in return for the maps revealing the locations of some 92,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in the Fizuli and Zangilan regions.

In a statement released on Saturday, Azerbaijan said Moscow had helped in negotiations that resulted in Baku obtaining detailed minefield maps from Armenia.

It also said that in exchange, Baku had released and handed over 15 inmates who had served their prison sentences in Azerbaijan. It gave no details of who the prisoners were.

The decades-long tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region flared up last September, resulting in military and civilian casualties from both sides.

A Russian-brokered ceasefire ended the conflict with Azerbaijan gaining huge swathes of land that Armenia had controlled.

Since the truce, the two ex-Soviet republics have accused each other of breaching the peace deal that ended six weeks of fierce fighting.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry announced on Saturday that a five-day joint military drill by Turkish and Azerbaijani armies in Baku had "successfully" ended.

The main objective of the joint military drills, code-named Mustafa Kemal Ataturk 2021, was to "improve interoperability between the armies of the two countries during combat operations."

The development of "the military decision-making skills of the commanders" and "joint live-fire tactical exercises" were other objectives cited for the drills. "The units of the armies of Azerbaijan and Turkey participating in the exercises have successfully completed all the assigned tasks," said a statement by the ministry.

An earlier statement by Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said 600 military personnel would take part in the joint drills.

SS