According to the secretary of the Armenian Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, a truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan went into force on Wednesday evening.

"An agreement on a ceasefire has been reached with the participation of the international community," Grigoryan told Armenian television, adding that the accord went into force on Wednesday at 8 p.m. (1600 GMT).

Azerbaijan originally did not confirm the truce, but the Armenian Defense Ministry confirmed that shelling had ceased.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan informed the Armenian parliament that more than one hundred Armenians had been killed in fighting between the two countries since Monday night and that Azerbaijan had occupied 50 square kilometers (31 square miles) of Armenian territory. Azerbaijan has claimed the loss of 54 soldiers.

Despite the ceasefire, thousands of demonstrators flocked to the streets of the Armenian capital Yerevan on Wednesday evening, accusing Pashinyan of being soft on Baku and demanding his resignation.

Armenia has asked the collective security treaty organization (CSTO) to help in response to the attack. Due to Moscow's preoccupation with its war in Ukraine, the CSTO has agreed to deploy simply a fact-finding delegation to the region on Thursday.

Since the Soviet era, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been embroiled in a dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory, which traditionally had a majority Armenian population but was officially part of Azerbaijan.

According to sources, the flare-up in combat this week was not centered in Nagorno-Karabakh, but rather in Armenia itself.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh, supported by Yerevan, declared independence from Azerbaijan, renaming itself the Republic of Artsakh and igniting a three-year war.

Armenia won the conflict in 1994, and Nagorno-Karabakh remained under effective Armenian authority for a quarter century, but its status was never internationally recognized.

After decades of stalemate, Azerbaijan retook substantial portions of Nagorno-Karabakh in a military assault in 2020, compelling Armenia to make significant territorial concessions. Among these was a provision restricting Armenian access to the region to a single safe corridor overseen by Russian forces.