France pushed for international talks on Tuesday to resolve an escalating conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia as fighting raged for a third day over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy losses.

Urgent calls from world leaders for a halt to the fierce clashes that erupted on Sunday have gone unheeded by the ex-Soviet rivals, who have been locked for decades in a territorial dispute over Karabakh.