23 September 2008
BBC Monitoring Service, Kavkaz-Tsentr news agency website

A Kavkaz-Tsentr source in Azerbaijan reports that actual fighting between regular Azerbaijani troops and armed groups of Muslims has been under way in the north of that country for several weeks now.

The main zone of the hostilities is Qusar District. Tanks and special purpose units have been deployed to the district. Helicopter gunships and aircraft are being used.

Tanks of the Azerbaijani armed forces are patrolling the town of Qusar [which is the administrative centre of Qusar District], where mainly ethnic Lezgis live. Special units are capturing young people - men and women who look like "Wahhabis".

In turn, official representatives of the Baku regime have said that "a special operation against terrorist groups that are hiding in Azerbaijani-Russian border regions" is under way in northern Azerbaijan.

[passage omitted: quoting Elcin Quliyev, head of the State Border Service of Azerbaijan].

According to information available to Kavkaz-Tsentr, three mojahedin were martyred (God willing) in the latest fighting in Qusar District. The troops of the Baku regime sustained serious losses too. However, this information is classified, likewise information about the actual events in this region of Azerbaijan.

The Baku regime has declared that "extremist Wahhabi groups which want to destabilize the situation in the region, and subsequently create an Islamic state in the North and South Caucasus" are operating in Qusar District.

The Kavkaz-Tsentr source reports that sporadic clashes between armed groups of locals and troops of the Baku regime started in June. According to some information, groups of mojahedin who took part in military action against Russian occupying troops on the territory of the province of Dagestan of the Caucasus Emirate [Chechen rebel leader Dokka Umarov-declared religious Islamic state] are taking part in the fighting.

Moscow maintains that mojahedin units in northern Azerbaijan are using this territory as a rear base, periodically infiltrating Dagestan and attacking the Russian occupiers. Under Russia's pressure, the Baku regime has launched a large-scale military operation in Qusar District, where, as the Azerbaijani special services believe, there are key mojahedin groups.

The Azerbaijani special services are intensively using provocations in the war against Muslim volunteers, the participants in military action on the territory of the Caucasus Emirate.

Thus, the Abu-Bakr mosque in Baku, which is considered to be a "Wahhabi" one, was blown up recently [17 August]. The Azerbaijani authorities said that "Wahhabis" themselves blew up the "Wahhabi" mosque.