Azerbaijan forces tightened their grip on the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh on Saturday as international concern mounted over the plight of ethnic Armenian civilians trapped there.
As the first Red Cross aid convoy crossed into the disputed enclave since Azerbaijan launched this week’s lightning offensive, government forces said rebel “demilitarisation” had begun.
Moscow announced on Friday that ethnic Armenian separatist fighters had begun to surrender weapons under a Russian-mediated agreement. On Saturday, the Azerbaijan forces were keen to show off a captured rebel arsenal.
They displayed infantry weapons including sniper rifles, hundreds of Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and four tanks painted with cross insignia, that they said they had seized from the separatists.
“We have more like that in the forest, but we can’t bring them all here,” said Lieutenant General Mais Barkhudarov, commander of Azerbaijan’s 2nd Army Corps.
From the Shusha district, outside the regional capital Stepanakert, Azerbaijani Colonel Anar Eyvazov said they were working closely with Russian peacekeepers conducting the demilitarisation process.
Baku’s forces now control the area, and the town of Shusha appears deserted. Troops have mortar positions on high ground overlooking the approach to Stepanakert, AFP reporters saw.
They also control the so-called Lachin Corridor to the southwest, that once connected the breakaway region to Armenia. Baku has mounted a de facto blockade there for the past nine months.
Food Convoy
A humanitarian convoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross was nevertheless able to cross into the area on Saturday — the first since fighting erupted earlier this week.
On the Armenian side of the border, at the Kornidzor checkpoint, local ICRC spokesman Zara Amatuni told AFP that 70 metric tonnes of food and humanitarian aid had passed through the Lachin Corridor.
If the ceasefire holds, it could mark the end of a conflict between the Christian and Muslim Caucasus rivals that has raged, off and on, through the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In a hint of the bad blood between the sides, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry on Saturday accused Karabakh Armenians of setting fire to their homes in one village to keep them from Baku’s advancing troops.
Some villagers also set fire to their homes before fleeing after Azerbaijan first began to re-establish control over parts of Nagorno-Karabakh in a six-week war in 2020.
Russia said an Azerbaijani soldier had been “wounded during an exchange of fire.” It was investigating the incident with Baku and separatist officials, it added.
‘Deep Concern’
A US congressional delegation traveled to Armenia to show support for embattled Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and to inspect the region’s blockade.
At the United Nations General Assembly, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov insisted “that Azerbaijan is determined to reintegrate ethnic Armenian residents of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan as equal citizens.”
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, also addressing the General Assembly in New York, called for a UN mission there to monitor treatment of the ethnic Armenians.
Also in New York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Armenian leaders of worsening tensions, referring to criticism by some of their politicians of Russia’s role in the crisis.
He nevertheless voiced confidence that Armenians would remain linked to “Russia and other friendly states in the region rather than those who swoop in from abroad.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that the Washington had “deep concern” for ethnic Armenians in there, in a phone call Saturday, a spokesman said.
The years of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh have been marked by abuses on both sides and there are fears of a new refugee crisis.
Trapped Civilians
In the Armenian border town of Kornidzor, civilians were gathered at the last checkpoint before Azerbaijani territory hoping for news of relatives.
“I’ve been here for three days and nights, sleeping in my car,” said 28-year-old Garik Zakaryan, as displaced Armenians borrowed a soldier’s telescope to scan a village across the valley.
It was shelled by Azerbaijani forces on Tuesday. No one was killed, but witnesses who managed to escape reported that 150 inhabitants had been forced to take refuge close to a Russian peacekeeper base a kilometer from the last Armenian positions.
Zakaryan got his family out in December, three days before Azerbaijan blockaded the area, but he is worried for friends and family still across the border.
“I don’t have much hope of seeing them soon, but I couldn’t just do nothing. Just being here, being able to see the Russian base, I feel better,” he said.
Separatist leaders have said they are in Russian-mediated talks with Baku to organize the withdrawal process and the return of civilians displaced by the fighting.
They say they are discussing how citizens’ access to and from Nagorno-Karabakh, where up to 120,000 ethnic Armenians live, will work.