Azerbaijan and Armenia stopped exchanging fire on Tuesday over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a local official said, following the region’s worst violence in decades.

Azerbaijan and Armenia stopped exchanging fire on Tuesday over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a local official said, following the region’s worst violence in decades.

Hostilities escalated last Friday when Azeri troops broke through Armenian lines in a bid to retake strategic heights within Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave held by ethnic Armenians within the territory of Azerbaijan. The fighting has claimed dozens of lives.

“There is zero fire from both sides” said Artak Beglaryan, the spokesman for the separatist republic’s prime minister, despite the absence of a formal truce. “At this moment, there is no written agreement.”

Azerbaijan has long threatened to retake the region which it lost following six years of fighting which started in the final years of the Soviet Union. A cease-fire brokered by Russia in 1994 froze the conflict along a boundary, known as the Line of Contact, between the two sides. They never signed a peace agreement.

The Azeri Defense Ministry confirmed Tuesday’s cessation of hostilities, Interfax reported.

“Operations have stopped along the Line of Contact according to an agreement reached [between the sides],” a statement from the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said Baku was ready to agree to a mutual cease-fire, Interfax reported.

“We want a continuation of talks,” Mr. Aliyev said during a meeting with soldiers and their relatives in Baku.

Washington and Moscow had called on both sides to exercise restraint in the conflict, which also prompted Azerbaijan’s regional ally Turkey to express its solidarity with Baku.