A medical worker talks to a sick woman in a bomb shelter in Stepanakert, the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. Heavy fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh continued Thursday with Armenia and Azerbaijan trading blame for new attacks, hostilities that raised the threat of Turkey and Russia being drawn into the conflict. (AP Photo)

STEPANAKERT, Nagorno-Karabakh (AP) — Heavy fighting raged Friday over Nagorno-Karabakh even as top diplomats from Armenia and Azerbaijan traveled to Washington for negotiations on settling the neighboring countries’ decades-long conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s scheduled talks with Armenia and Azerbaijan’s foreign ministers follow two failed Russian attempts to broker a cease-fire in the worst outbreak of hostilities over the region for more than a quarter-century.

The warring sides traded accusations early Friday involving the shelling of residential areas. Authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh said the town of Martakert and several villages in the Martuni region were struck by Azerbaijani rockets.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry denied the claim and accused Armenian forces of targeting the Terter, Agdam and Agjabedi regions of Azerbaijan overnight.

Amid the relentless shelling, many residents have sought protection from rockets and artillery shells by moving into squalid basements.

A few families, including children and elderly women, found refuge in the basement of a school in Stepanakert, the regional capital of Nagorno-Karabakh.

One of the residents who found shelter there, Nurvart, said her five sons were all at the frontline along with other ethnic Armenian residents of the region who joined the military amid the recent armed conflict.

“They are fighting for our right to live here,” said Nurvart, who refrained from mentioning her last name amid the hostilities.

Small children played and laughed as women cooked food and tried to warm up the cold, damp school basement.

Another woman hiding in the basement, Marina, vented her anger at the Azerbaijani authorities:

“All they know is how to kill,” she said, not giving her last name in the jittery war situation.

“I do not know, maybe there are people who feel the same as we do, but there is a government that has created all this.”

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. The current fighting that started Sept. 27 marks the worst escalation in the conflict since the war’s end.