Azerbaijan said today it has discovered a mass grave of Azerbaijani soldiers who Baku says were killed by Armenian separatists during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the early 1990s, AFP reported.

"A mass grave of Azerbaijani soldiers who were tortured and executed during the first Karabakh war was discovered in Edili village," Hikmet Hajiyev, diplomatic adviser to the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, announced on Twitter today.

According to Hadjiev, there are still 4,000 Azerbaijanis missing after the first Karabakh war.

He accused Armenia of refusing to disclose the locations of the mass graves.

Namig Efendiev, a representative of the Azerbaijani Commission for Prisoners of War, told AFP that since February, 25 bodies have been found in a mass grave in Edili.

Over 135 Armenian soldiers have died in the clashes with Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan's announcement of the opening of the mass grave comes amid fresh border clashes with Armenia, which have raised fears that a new conflict could be brewing between the two countries.

On Sunday, Yerevan accused Baku of "war crimes" during the recent clashes, and said in particular that Azerbaijani forces had executed and tortured Armenian prisoners of war.

In response to these accusations, Baku announced that the Azerbaijani military prosecutor's office was opening an investigation into possible crimes committed by Armenian forces, reports AFP.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Ilham Aliyev