The ethnic Armenian leadership of breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh said Saturday that the terms of their cease-fire with Azerbaijan were being implemented, with work proceeding on the delivery of humanitarian aid and evacuation of the wounded.
Earlier, the Karabakh Armenians held another round of talks with Azerbaijani officials in the town of Shusha, three days after the cease-fire that followed a lightning 24-hour offensive in which Baku retook control of the mountainous region.
Work is underway too to restore electricity supplies by Sunday, the Karabakh Armenians said in a statement which also referred to “political consultations” on the future of the region, which they call Artsakh, and its 120,000 Armenian residents.
Russia’s defense ministry said that, under the terms of the cease-fire, the Armenian separatists had begun handing over their weapons to Azerbaijan, including more than 800 guns and six armored vehicles. Moscow has 2,000 peacekeepers in the area.
With Armenians suffering serious shortages of food and fuel after a months-long de facto Azerbaijani blockade, an aid convoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headed into Karabakh on Saturday, the first since Baku’s offensive.
The ICRC said in a later statement that the convoy had transported nearly 70 metric tons of humanitarian supplies along the Lachin corridor, the only road link from Armenia to Karabakh.
An ICRC team also carried out the medical evacuation of 17 people wounded during the fighting, it said.
Separately, Russia said it had delivered more than 50 tons of food and other aid to Karabakh.
More than 20 other aid trucks, bearing Armenian number plates, have been lined up along a nearby roadside since July. Azerbaijan said at the time this convoy amounted to a “provocation” and an attack on its territorial integrity.
Azerbaijan wants to integrate the long-contested region of Karabakh and has promised to protect the Armenians’ rights.
Armenians say they fear persecution if they stay.
“Our people do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan. 99.9% prefer to leave our historic lands,” David Babayan, an adviser to Samvel Shahramanyan, the president of the self-styled “Republic of Artsakh”.
He said it was unclear when the 120,000 of Karabakh Armenians would move down the Lachin corridor.
“The fate of our poor people will go down in history as a disgrace and a shame for the Armenian people and for the whole civilised world. Those responsible for our fate will one day have to answer before God for their sins,” he said.
Azerbaijan’s interior ministry said on Saturday that it was providing the Armenian civilian population with tents, hot food and medical assistance.
“We are also working on issuing documents to the Armenian population, passports and so on,” ministry spokesman Elshad Hajiyev told Reuters. “There are already people who have applied to us.”
Thousands of Karabakh Armenians have massed at the airport seeking the protection of Russian peacekeepers there.
Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said ethnic Armenians in Karabakh should not leave their homes unless it is absolutely necessary. Armenia lost a 2020 war with Azerbaijan over the region.
Azerbaijan launched its “anti-terrorist” operation on Tuesday against Nagorno-Karabakh after some of its troops were killed in what Baku said were separatist attacks.
Karabakh was more militarized than Baku realised, Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijan’s president, said on social media on Saturday, publishing a list of weapons and ammunition that had been seized in the past three days, including tanks, explosives and mortar shells.
