“The downing of an Armenian helicopter today is an indefensible aggressive action that threatens to undermine the fragile ceasefire and plunge the region back into violence.”

US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce announced the above-said, just hours after Wednesday’s Azerbaijani attack. “Azerbaijan must immediately cease all such attacks and provocations and commit to concrete progress in the [OSCE] Minsk Group talks.”

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has informed Armenian News-NEWS.am that Members of Congress continue condemning Azerbaijan’s latest escalation of anti-Armenian aggression.

In a statement, Congresswoman Judy Chu explained, “I am deeply troubled by the latest evidence of Azerbaijan’s continued aggression with their attack on an apparently unarmed helicopter. The people in Nagorno Karabakh deserve and desire peace, but Azerbaijan’s disregard for the 1994 cease fire threatens both sides with conflict.”

“Azerbaijan should be held accountable for engaging in violence and not in peaceful negotiations,” tweeted Congressman Brad Sherman.

ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian, on the other hand, was forceful in his responses to weak Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and US State Department responses to the helicopter shooting.

“The OSCE’s public response once again falls back into the deeply flawed pattern of placing equal blame on both sides for hostility that all the world knows is being directed by one man – Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan,” he stated.

Earlier, Congressmen Frank Pallone Jr. and Adam Schiff likewise had issued statements condemning Azerbaijan’s downing of the Armenian helicopter.

Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire and shot down a Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) Air Force helicopter on Wednesday. The chopper was downed during a training flight, and it crashed nearby the Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact. As a result, three pilots are believed to have been killed: The commander of the helicopter, Major Sergey Sahakyan, and Senior Lieutenant Sargis Nazaryan and Lieutenant Azat Sahakyan. Information was disseminated some time thereafter, however, that a member of the helicopter crew may still be alive. The adversary, on the other hand, continues to fire intensive shots toward the crash site, thus, not allowing the Armenian side access to the area.