Long-boiling tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared again on April 2nd, 2016, with dozens of soldiers and civilians from both sides killed in the fighting.

The theatre was centred in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region occupied by Armenian forces. Nagorno-Karabakh, apart from several other districts beyond the region, has been controlled by ethnic Armenian separatists since a war that ended in 1994. Although cross-border violence has continued to be a usual phenomenon since the 1994 truce and despite it, annually claiming dozens of lives on both sides, the recent clashes have been the most severe escalation which have almost transformed into full-scale warfare.