Dozens of people – both civilians and troops – have been killed and hundreds wounded in fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to local officials, after Azerbaijan launched attacks on the disputed region.

The Azerbaijani prosecutor general’s office said Armenian forces fired at Shusha, a city in Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijan’s control, using large-calibre weapons, killing one civilian.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken called on Azerbaijan to halt its operation immediately, saying it was worsening an already dire humanitarian situation – a reference to a lengthy de facto blockade of the region by Baku.

Armenia, which says its armed forces are not in Karabakh and that the situation on its own border with Azerbaijan is stable, called on members of the UN security council to help and for Russian peacekeepers on the ground to intervene.

Russia, which brokered a fragile ceasefire after a war in 2020 which saw Azerbaijan recapture swathes of land in and around Nagorno-Karabakh that it had lost in an earlier conflict in the 1990s, called for all sides to stop fighting.

Food shortages persisted in the area, with the limited amount of humanitarian aid delivered on Monday not distributed due to the shelling, which resumed in the evening after halting briefly in the afternoon.

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