The lightning offensive carried out by the military forces of Azerbaijan had borne fruit. On September 20, a ceasefire was negotiated with separatists in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Now, Baku is aiming for more. This Sunday, September 24, the objective still remains to obtain total control over the territory, which worries the international community about the fate that could be reserved for the Armenians, numerous in the region.
A first international aid convoy entered Nagorno-Karabakh on Saturday, where the Azerbaijani army showed the press, on the heights of the capital Stepanakert, hundreds of weapons seized from the separatists. “The ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross, Editor’s note] passed through the Lachin corridor to bring mainly 70 tons of humanitarian aid to the population,” said an International Red Cross official at the Armenian checkpoint. from Kornidzor, Armenia.
Since the end of 2022, Armenia has accused Baku of blocking this only road which directly connects it to Nagorno-Karabakh to cause shortages in the enclave. In Kornidzor, a handful of Armenian soldiers prevent civilians, consumed by worry, from entering nearby Nagorno-Karabakh.
Using a spyglass borrowed from the soldiers, a man tries to identify the damage in the village of Eghtsahog, almost within reach, on the other side of the valley. “There used to be a church there. I can no longer see the bell tower: it has been destroyed,” he grumbles before walking away.
On Tuesday, Eghtsahog was bombed. Luckily, no one was killed and the 150 residents found shelter around a Russian army camp. But they are now stuck. Yana Avanessian, 29, can no longer return to Stepanakert, where she teaches law. According to her, Armenians who manage to contact their relatives in this region, when the phone calls go through, describe a “horrible” situation.
Azerbaijan, for its part, announced on Saturday that it was carrying out a “demilitarization” of Armenian secessionist forces with Russia, during a press trip in which AFP participated.
In the surroundings of Choucha, a town in Nagorno-Karabakh controlled by Baku, not far from Stepanakert, hundreds of small arms seized from the separatists, but also tanks marked with a white cross, were shown to journalists.
In the courtyard in which the military arsenal was displayed, was written in large black letters: “Karabakh is Azerbaijani.”
Azerbaijan launched a military operation on Tuesday in this secessionist region mainly populated by Armenians, winning a lightning victory. The separatists agreed on Friday to surrender their arms.
This mountainous enclave, which had been attached in 1921 by Soviet power to Azerbaijani territory, had been, in the past, the scene of two wars between the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia: one in 1988 in 1994 (30,000 deaths) and the other in the fall of 2020 (6,500 deaths).
The Azerbaijani military operation, which ended within 24 hours on Wednesday, left at least 200 dead and 400 injured, according to Armenian separatists. At the UN, Armenia called for the “immediate” dispatch of a UN mission there.
“The international community should make every effort for the immediate deployment of a UN interagency mission to Nagorno-Karabakh with the aim of monitoring and assessing human rights and the humanitarian and security situation on the ground,” he said. said Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, repeating accusations of “ethnic cleansing” in the region.
“Azerbaijan is determined to reintegrate the Armenian inhabitants of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan as equal citizens,” assured his Azerbaijani counterpart, Djeyhoun Baïramov, at the same platform.
“The Constitution, national legislation of Azerbaijan and the international commitments we have made are a solid basis for this goal,” he added.
In a phone call with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “expressed the United States’ deep concern for the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh,” according to the Department of Defense spokesperson. State, Matthew Miller.
Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov, for his part, accused certain Western powers of having “pulled the strings” to undermine Russian influence in the region. And “unfortunately, from time to time, Armenian leaders have added fuel to the fire,” he said.
Surrounded by Azerbaijani troops, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert, is deprived of electricity and fuel, and its population lacks food and medicine, reported an AFP correspondent on site.
Azerbaijani troops “are everywhere around Stepanakert, they are on the outskirts,” a spokesperson for the local authorities, Armine Hayrapetian, told AFP.
