Eighteen Nagorno-Karabakh civilians were killed by fire from Azeri forces and more than 90 were wounded in the past week, RIA Novosti news agency cited an official in the breakaway region as saying on Sunday (October 4) as the conflict entered its second week.

The Human Rights Obudsman of self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh region, Artak Beglaryan, released a video calling on the international community to act, claiming that Azerbaijan's armed forces were targeting civilian areas in the region's capital, Stepankert.

"My call upon the international community is to react properly, to stop talking and start acting, don't be blind," he said.

The fighting began last Sunday and has surged to its worst level since the 1990s, when some 30,000 people were killed.

Azerbaijan said on Sunday that Armenian forces had fired rockets at its second city of Ganja, killing one civilian and wounding four, and threatened to retaliate by destroying military targets inside Armenia.

The developments marked a sharp escalation of the war in the South Caucasus that broke out one week ago.

Armenia denied it had directed fire "of any kind" towards Azerbaijan. The leader of Nagorno-Karabakh said his forces had targeted a military airbase in Ganja but later stopped firing in order to avoid civilian casualties.

Until now, the main fighting has been between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, but it now threatens to spill over into a direct war with Armenia itself.

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