The cease-fire, clinched after marathon talks in Moscow advocated by President Vladimir Putin, was meant to halt fighting to allow ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani forces to swap prisoners and war dead, Reuters wrote.

The Moscow talks were the first diplomatic contact between the two since fighting over the mountainous enclave erupted on Sept. 27, killing hundreds of people. The enclave is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but is populated and governed by ethnic Armenians.

Both sides accused one another of breaking the cease-fire almost immediately on Saturday, and Azerbaijan gave the impression in public comments from top officials that it saw it as only a brief and temporary breathing space anyway.

On Sunday, Azerbaijan accused Armenia of heavily shelling a residential area in Ganja, its second largest city, in the early hours of the morning, and of hitting an apartment building.

Azerbaijan said nine people had been killed and 34 wounded in the attack.

A Reuters photographer saw rescue workers in Ganja carrying one dead person from the ruins of the apartment building on Sunday morning. The structure had been almost leveled. An excavator was clearing the debris.

Buildings and cars in the immediate vicinity had also been severely damaged.

Baku says more than 40 civilians had been killed and 200 injured since the start of the conflict.

The Armenian Defense Ministry called the Azerbaijani allegations about the attack on Ganja “an absolute lie” and accused Azerbaijan of continuing to shell populated areas inside Karabakh, including Stepanakert, the region’s biggest city.

Footage from Stepanakert showed a small brick house damaged by shelling, its windows shattered and its roof caved in. The Karabakh authorities said 429 servicemen had been killed since fighting erupted last month.

Azerbaijan accused Armenia of also launching an unsuccessful rocket attack on an Azerbaijani hydroelectric power station in Mingachevir. Ethnic Armenian forces in Karabakh denied the assertion.

Israeli complicity

Arayik Haratyunyan, the leader of ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, described the situation as relatively calm on Sunday morning, but said he did not know how long it would last and that the frontline remained tense.

He accused Azerbaijani forces of trying to unsuccessfully take control of the town of Hadrut, and said the process of the two sides exchanging prisoners should have started on Sunday, but that it was unclear if and when that would happen.

Haratyunyan also said Israel is a complicit in what he called Azerbaijan’s “genocidal” war.

He said Israel authorities are well aware that the Israeli-made UAVs they sold to Azerbaijan are being used for attacks on the civilian population, according to Armen Press.

“They know and they continue supplying them,” he said, adding that Israel “is also responsible for this genocide.”

Renewed fighting in the decades-old conflict has raised fears of a wider war.

The clashes have also increased concern about the security of pipelines that carry Azerbaijani oil and gas to Europe.

The fighting is the worst since a 1991-94 war that killed about 30,000 people and ended with a cease-fire that has been violated repeatedly.

Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli announced the cease-fire on Friday and the leader of a rival parliament in eastern Libya also appealed for a halt to hostilities.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomes the calls for a cease-fire and an end to hostilities in Libya and hopes they “will be respected immediately by armed forces from both sides,” said the spokesperson for the UN chief, Stephane Dujarric, AP reported.

The UN chief urged the Joint Military Commission to quickly take up the cease-fire call and called on all parties “to engage constructively in an inclusive political process” based on the outcome of a conference of world leaders in Berlin in January, Dujarric said.

World powers and other countries with interests in Libya’s long-running civil war agreed at the meeting to respect a much-violated arms embargo, hold off on military support to the warring parties and push them to reach a full cease-fire.

UAE’s Foreign Ministry welcomed Saleh’s cease-fire initiative that did not include the demilitarization of Jurfa area, according the state-run WAM news agency.

The interior minister of the Tripoli-based administration, Fathi Bashaga, hailed the cease-fire initiative, saying on Twitter: “We are looking forward to develop cooperation with the US, Europe, Turkey, Egypt and the UN.”

Fayez Sarraj, head of the Government of National Accord in Tripoli, said an effective cease-fire requires “the demilitarization of Sirte and Jurfa areas, and that police forces from the two sides agree on security arrangements there.”

Aguila Saleh, speaker of the rival eastern-based House of Representatives, supported Sarraj’s proposal of demilitarization of Sirte – but he did not mention Jurfa. The United States floated the idea of demilitarization earlier this month.

Sarraj also called for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held in March according to “a constitutional base to be agreed on by the Libyans.”

Saleh, the parliament speaker, called for Sirte to be a temporary seat of the new government.

Both Saraj and Saleh said they want an end to an oil blockade imposed by commander Khalifa Haftar’s camp since earlier this year. They also called for oil revenues, the country’s main source of revenue, to flow into the bank account of the National Oil Corporation outside Libya.

The National Oil Corporation urged for oil revenues to “remain frozen until a comprehensive political agreement is reached.”

“Full transparency and effective governance are required as well as the return of security management of oil facilities to NOC’s exclusive control,” it said in a statement.

Powerful tribes in eastern Libya loyal to Haftar closed oil export terminals and choked off major pipelines at the start of the year to pressure the Tripoli-based government, which is accused of using oil revenues to fund militias and mercenaries.

The Taliban made the three-day truce offer to mark the Eid al-Fitr holiday that started Sunday – a move swiftly welcomed by the government, which reciprocated by announcing plans to free insurgent prisoners, AFP wrote.

President Ashraf Ghani said the government was also ready to hold peace talks with the Taliban, seen as key to ending a nearly two-decade-long war in the country.

“The cease-fire is holding. There have been no reports of any violation so far,” National Security Council spokesman Javid Faisal said.

“We hope this will eventually lead to a lasting peace that the people of Afghanistan so much desire and deserve.”

Faisal said the authorities plan to release the insurgents in batches of 100 daily.

“The release process will continue with 100 prisoners each day until the 2,000 count is reached,” Faisal said.

In the northern city of Kunduz, attacked just days ago by the Taliban, calm prevailed as residents celebrated Eid.

“Just two days ago panic had set in the city,” said Atiqullah, a shopkeeper from Kunduz.

“Today, you go out and feel as if there is no more fighting. People are actually celebrating Eid.”

The normally restive southern province of Uruzgan was also calm, police said.

“There was non-stop fighting every single day, but since the cease-fire was announced not a single shot has been fired,” said Haji Lal Agha, the provincial police chief.

“It is especially good for the residents of Trinkot who would hear the sound of gunfire every day,” he added, referring to the provincial capital.

There were no reports of fighting from Kandahar, once a bastion for the Taliban, and the southeast province of Khost was also peaceful, police said.

Violence had escalated since the Taliban signed a deal with Washington in February to withdraw all US forces from the country by early next year.

The agreement also set the stage for intra-Afghan peace talks and stipulated that the government would first release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners, while the militants would free about 1,000 national security.

Before Sunday’s announcement to free up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners as a “goodwill gesture”, Kabul had already released about 1,000 Taliban inmates while the insurgents had let go roughly 300 Afghan security forces members.

The Taliban insists that Kabul must release 5,000 of its members as agreed in the deal with the US.

“This process should be completed in order to remove hurdles in the way of commencement of intra-Afghan negotiations,” a Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Twitter.

Since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 there has only been one other cease-fire – a three-day pause between the Taliban and Kabul, also marking Eid, in 2018.

That cease-fire was initiated by Ghani.