‘They bombed everywhere’: Survivors recount Karabakh attack

BBC News
Sept 27 2023

The BBC has been given eyewitness accounts of a bombing incident in a remote village in Nagorno-Karabakh that killed three children and two elderly people. Azerbaijan insists it only focused on "legitimate military targets", but the BBC has spoken to one mother who lost two young sons and had another seriously injured, in what survivors describe as an "indiscriminate attack".

Sarnaghbuyr (called Aghbulag by Azerbaijan) is a village in the Askeran region of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is surrounded by forest and far from any significant military targets.

Zarine Ghazaryan was in the nearby town of Askeran when the attack started on 19 September. She was trying to find baby formula to feed her youngest son, Karen. Nine months of living under a de facto blockade had meant shortages of food, fuel and heating.

Hearing explosions, she tried to return home but says she was stopped by heavy incoming fire.

She was told her son Seyran had been badly wounded, and taken to hospital in Stepanakert (Khankendi), the territory's main city. Her three other children were being evacuated by Russian peacekeepers. But when she reached the hospital she heard the bombs had killed two of her sons: Eight-year-old Mikayel and Nver, who was 10.

We spoke to her at the hospital. She says she was allowed to see the bodies of her two sons, who had extensive head injuries. "I have seen them, they are in a horrific state.' she said. "It is horrible, I just want their father to come."

Arman, a 15-year-old boy from the village, was with the children when they came under heavy fire. We spoke to him as he was being treated for wounds on his back, shoulders and hands.

"They started bombing everywhere. Some people got killed, some were wounded, I saw some people who had had their heads blown off. It was horrendous." he said.

Arman said three shells exploded next to him.

"We huddled the kids together under some trees, to see if we could get them to safety, and that's where they bombed," he said.

Local authorities say three other people were killed that day. Garik Alexanyan, the village mayor, lost his son David, father Alexander and mother-in law Gohar. His description of his son's injuries is too graphic to repeat.

According to the authorities, a further 15 villagers were wounded. Many others were forced to leave their homes.

They joined the exodus of thousands of other ethnic Armenians displaced from their homes by the attack. Most tried to reach Stepanakert or were taken by Russian peacekeepers to their base at a local airport. Many were hoping to be airlifted to Armenia, but instead remain stranded on the airstrip.

Zarine wants to take her son's bodies to Armenia for burial, but space on planes out of Karabakh is being used to evacuate the wounded, and the queue to leave by road reaches for dozens of kilometres. So she and her family wait.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify details of the attack.

Ambassador Elchin Amirbekov, a special envoy of Azerbaijan's president, told the BBC that the Azerbaijani army had orders "to neutralise only legitimate military targets." He said: "It has never been our intention to harm any civilian. It is true that collateral damage happens, and we regret any loss of civilian life."

He completely rejected accusations this attack was carried out deliberately, and said that in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis had been displaced by the Armenian forces and that war crimes had been committed against them.

Additional reporting by Kayleen Devlin



Armenian soccer star Henrikh Mkhitaryan calls for international support in Nagorno-Karabakh

CNN
Sept 27 2023


Armenian soccer player Henrikh Mkhitaryan has called on international leaders to “stand up against ethnic cleansing” in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked region in the Caucasus Mountains that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is home to around 120,000 ethnic Armenians, who make up the majority of the population and reject Azerbaijani rule.

The region has its own de facto government that is backed by Armenia, but is not officially recognized by Armenia or any other country.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Inter Milan midfielder said his “heart breaks” as he is getting more information about “the stories of trauma, loss, and severe violations of human rights of thousands of Armenian families who are being forcibly displaced from Nagorno Karabakh and flee for Armenia in a mass exodus.”

Just over 47,000 people arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh as of 12.15 p.m. local time (4.15aET) Wednesday, the Armenian prime minister’s spokesperson said.

The vast majority of those arriving continue to be women, children and the elderly, a spokesperson for the Armenian Red Cross told CNN Wednesday.

The latest figures mean that more than one-third of the region’s roughly ethnic Armenians have left Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been under blockade since December 2022, when Azerbaijan-backed activists established a military checkpoint on the Lachin corridor – the only road connecting the landlocked enclave to Armenia.

The blockade prevented the import of food, fuel and medicine to Nagorno-Karabakh, prompting fears that residents were being left to starve. A former International Criminal Court chief prosecutor said in August there is “reasonable basis to believe that genocide is being committed against Armenians” in the region.

The closure of the Lachin corridor has also prevented international organizations and foreign media from accessing Nagorno-Karabakh. The road was only opened last weekend to allow residents to flee.

Mkhitaryan, the former Manchester United and Arsenal player, wrote: “We often look back to those dark pages of indiscriminate killings, ethnic cleansing and concentration camps with remorse, and regret that no one did enough to stop it.”

The 34-year-old also called for the “deployment of international monitoring missions” and the “immediate mobilization of emergency humanitarian aid” through the Lachin corridor.

In 2019, while playing for Arsenal, Mkhitaryan missed the Europa League final in Baku, Azerbaijan, due to fears over his safety

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a century-long conflict stemming from the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917.

Azerbaijan’s brief but bloody offensive last week killed more than 200 people and injured many more, before ethnic Armenian Karabakh officials in the enclave agreed to a Russia-brokered ceasefire in which they agreed to dissolve their armed forces.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said Baku had restored its sovereignty over the enclave “with an iron fist.”

The Karabakh presidency told Reuters that the majority of Karabakh Armenians did not want to live in Azerbaijan and that they would leave for Armenia.

Azerbaijan has said it will guarantee the rights of those living in the region, but Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and international experts have repeatedly warned of risks of ethnic cleansing of Armenians in the enclave.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/27/sport/henrikh-mkhitaryan-armenia-nagorno-karabakh-spt-intl/index.html

AYF leads White House protest demanding Biden stop Azerbaijan’s Artsakh Genocide

Armenian Americans joined with faith-based and human rights groups in demanding the Biden administration stop the Armenian Genocide of 2023 at a White House protest organized by the AYF D.C. Ani Chapter

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Armenian Youth Federation – Youth Organization of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (AYF) Washington, D.C. “Ani” Chapter organized a protest outside the White House demanding that the Biden Administration directly intervene to stop Azerbaijan’s genocide against the 120,000 indigenous Armenians of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), sanction Azerbaijan for its war crimes and take immediate measures to ensure the safety and security of Artsakh residents.

The protest came just two days after Azerbaijan launched a brutal attack against Artsakh, killing over 200 and forcing tens of thousands from their homes. The genocidal onslaught followed nine months of Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Berdzor (Lachin) Corridor, the only road that connects Artsakh to the rest of the world, leaving the people of Artsakh without food, medical supplies and energy resources.

AYF D.C. Ani chapter member Matt Girardi implored protesters to “remember how futures are built…who we are…and [to] never stop fighting for a truly free, independent and united Armenia.”Matt Girardi, a member of the AYF Washington, D.C. “Ani” Chapter, opened the protest with a powerful indictment of Azerbaijan’s actions.  “Let us be clear: this is genocide. It has been, and it continues to be. It is the echo of 1915 that should haunt the world.”

Girardi voiced the Armenian American community’s clear demands of the Biden administration.  “Going forward, we need our government to act. We need it to protect the people of Artsakh’s sacred right to self-determination. We need a U.N. mandate for international administration to immediately protect the population of Artsakh. We need this administration to finally hold Aliyev and all his goons accountable for the war crimes and genocide they have promulgated. We need immediate deliverance of humanitarian, development and reconstruction assistance, and to secure the safe return of all those indigenous Armenians displaced by Azerbaijan’s campaign of aggression,” stated Girardi.

In the face of one of the darkest moments in Armenian history, Girardi called for Armenians everywhere to “remember how futures are built…who we are…and [to] never stop fighting for a truly free, independent and united Armenia.”

An audio and photo collage of Girardi’s speech is available here.

AYF D.C. Ani Chapter member Sune Hamparian stresses Armenian American solidarity with the people of Artsakh during powerful remarks at the White House protest

Following chants demanding concrete U.S. action to stop the Armenian Genocide of 2023, fellow AYF “Ani” Chapter member Sune Hamparian stressed that the work of Armenians and their allies in the interfaith and human rights communities must continue in the face of the lack of a global response to Artsakh’s plight. “Where is your morality? Where is your humanity, your sympathy? Where is your heart?” she asked.

Hamparian affirmed that the Armenian American community remains “in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Artsakh; in faith with the generations that came before us; in tribute to those who fell in this struggle; in service to those generations that will follow.”

“Artsakh’s fate is not yet written,” and “America’s role is not yet over,” she stressed, reminding protesters of the Armenian American community’s decades-long battle to end U.S. complicity in the denial of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. “We broke the longest-lasting foreign gag rule in American history. We must now do the same for Artsakh, putting America on the right side of self-determination, of genocide prevention, of human rights,” concluded Hamparian.

Founded in 1942, the AYF Washington DC “Ani” and “Sevan” chapters work to unite Armenian youth and organize activities in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area. The chapter has a Senior ("Ani") and Junior ("Sevan") chapter. The Washington DC “Ani” chapter sets out to achieve its goals and objectives throughout the year and hosts events like joint meetings between DMV juniors and juniors in Armenia, protests and other forms of political activism, an annual chapter anniversary dinner and fundraisers to benefit the homeland. The AYF-YOARF's five pillars (athletic, cultural educational, political, social) guide the chapter and help keep its membership active and at the forefront of the Armenian cause at all times.


20 dead, nearly 300 injured in blast as Armenia refugees flee disputed enclave

ABC News
Sept 26 2023

An explosion Monday tore through a gas station in Nagorno-Karabakh amid exodus.

By Patrick Reevell

LONDON – At least 20 people were killed and nearly 300 were injured in an explosion on Monday night at a makeshift gas station being used by ethnic Armenian refugees as thousands sought to flee the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, according to local authorities, as senior U.S. officials visited Armenia to signal concern over the humanitarian crisis affecting the region's civilians.

Dozens of people are in a critical condition with severe burns and in urgent need of evacuation from the enclave where medical assistance was already minimal, the health ministry of the Nagorno-Karabakh's unrecognised ethnic Armenia government, the Republic of Artsakh, said in a statement. It said many people were still missing following the blast.

The explosion and fire ripped through the fuel store on Monday night as hundreds of refugees were lining up for gas for their vehicles to leave Nagorno-Karabakh, according to local officials.

Thousands of ethnic Armenians have been leaving the enclave following a successful military offensive last week by Azerbaijan that defeated the local Armenian authorities and restored Azerbaijan’s rule over the region.

Over 13,500 people have crossed from Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenia since Sunday, according to a statement from Armenia’s government. It’s feared the enclave’s entire population — estimated at 120,000 — may seek to flee in the coming days.

Armenia’s prime minister on Monday said what was happening was the “ethnic cleansing” of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population.

Long traffic jams of people seeking to leave were visible snaking miles along the only road out of Nagorno-Karabakh to a checkpoint in the "Lachin Corridor" that links the enclave to Armenia.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been at the center of a decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Internationally recognised as Azerbaijan’s territory, the two countries fought a bloody war over the enclave amid the collapse of the Soviet Union, in which Armenia backed local ethnic Armenian separatists, who succeeded in establishing control over most of the region. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani civilians were driven from the region during that war.

Azerbaijan reopened the conflict in 2020, launching a full-scale war that decisively defeated Armenia and forced it to largely abandon its claims to Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia helped broker a truce and dispatched a peacekeeping force there that remains deployed. Last week, Azerbaijan launched a new offensive that swiftly forced the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian’s leadership to surrender.

Since then thousands of ethnic Armenians have been preparing to leave the enclave, which has been under Azerbaijani blockade for nine months, unwilling to live under Azerbaijan’s rule and fearing they will face persecution.

Western countries, including the United States, France and Germany, have expressed concern for Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population and warned Azerbaijan it bears responsibility for their rights and security.

The Biden administration has dispatched Samantha Power, currently administrator of USAID and senior another State Department official to Armenia to express U.S. support for the country amid the crisis.

Power on Tuesday visited the checkpoint at Armenia's border with Nagorno-Karabakh where refugees have been arriving, and called for international monitors and aid groups to be given access to the enclave and for Azerbaijan to facilitate the evacuation of injured civilians from there.

"It is absolutely critical that independent monitors as well as humanitarian organisations get access to the people in Nagorno-Karabakh who still have dire needs," Power told journalists at the checkpoint. "There are still tens of thousands of Ethnic Armenians there living in very vulnerable conditions," announcing the U.S. would provide $11.5 million in humanitarian assistance that would include everything from food to psychiatric support.

Power, who has been a high-profile campaigner for human rights, said she was in Armenia to also hear testimonies from people fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh and that she would be reporting back to the Biden Administration as it considers how to respond to the crisis.

Power and the Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, Yuri Kim met with Armenia's prime minister Nikol Pashinyan on Monday. Power delivered a letter from President Joe Biden in which he expressed condolences for the loss of life in Nagorno-Karabakh and promised help on addressing humanitarian needs.

“I have asked Samantha Power, a key member of my cabinet, to personally convey to you the strong support of the United States and my Administration for Armenia’s pursuit of a dignified and durable regional peace that maintains your sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and democracy,” the letter read.

Pashinyan told Power the international community and Armenia had failed to prevent the “ethnic cleansing” of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians.

“Unfortunately, at the moment the process of the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh is continuing, it is happening right now. It’s a very tragic fact. We tried to inform the international community that this ethnic cleansing would happen, but, unfortunately, we did not manage to prevent it,” Pashinyan told Power and Yuri Kim, the State Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, according to the prime minister’s press service.

Armenia and Azerbaijan were due to hold talks mediated by the European Union in Brussels on Tuesday, the first talks between the sides since Azerbaijan’s retook Nagorno-Karabakh.

Monday’s blast at the fuel station added a horrific complication to the exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh, with local authorities pleading for people to hold off leaving as the traffic-choking the roads out was preventing the evacuation of the severely injured.

Helicopters from Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, were reported to have flown to Nagorno-Karabakh to help evacuate some of the worst injured. A long line of ambulances was also filmed by Russian media crossing into the enclave.

The enclave’s Armenian health authorities said the hospitals in the enclave, already short of medicine and other equipment, were not equipped for the disaster.

Russia’s peacekeeping contingent said it was also providing medical assistance and showed videos of its soldiers evacuating some of the injured.

U.S. calls on Azerbaijan to safeguard Armenians as thousands flee Karabakh

Reuters
Sept 26 2023
  • At least 19,000 Armenians have left Karabakh
  • U.S. says Azerbaijan must protect rights
  • U.S. demands humanitarian and monitoring mission
  • Russia scolds Armenia for flirting with West
  • Azerbaijan hints at land corridor to Turkey

NEAR KORNIDZOR, Armenia, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Hungry and exhausted Armenian families jammed roads to flee homes in the defeated breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the United States called on Azerbaijan to protect civilians and let in aid.

The Armenians of Karabakh – part of Azerbaijan that had been beyond Baku's control since the dissolution of the Soviet Union – began fleeing this week after their forces were routed in a lightning operation by Azerbaijan's military.

At least 19,000 of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians who call Nagorno-Karabakh home have already crossed into Armenia, Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan was quoted by Russia's TASS news agency as saying, with hundreds of cars and buses crammed with belongings snaking down the mountain road out of Azerbaijan.

Some fled packed into the back of open-topped trucks, others on tractors. Grandmother-of-four Narine Shakaryan arrived in her son-in-law's old car with six people packed inside. The 77 km (48-mile) drive had taken 24 hours, she said. They had had no food.

"The whole way the children were crying, they were hungry," Shakaryan told Reuters at the border, carrying her three-year old granddaughter, who she said had become ill during the journey. "We left so we would stay alive, not to live."

As Armenians rushed to leave the Karabakh capital, known as Stepanakert by Armenia and Khankendi by Azerbaijan, fuel stations were overwhelmed by panic buying. The authorities there said at least 20 people were killed and 290 injured in a massive blaze when a fuel storage facility blew up on Monday.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power, in the Armenian capital Yerevan, called on Azerbaijan "to maintain the ceasefire and take concrete steps to protect the rights of civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh".

Power, who earlier handed Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a letter of support from U.S. President Joe Biden, said Azerbaijan's use of force was unacceptable and that Washington was looking at an appropriate response.

She called on Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev to live up to his promise to protect ethnic Armenian rights, fully reopen the Lachin corridor that connects the region to Armenia and let in aid deliveries and an international monitoring mission.

Aliyev has pledged to guarantee the safety of Karabakh's Armenians but said his iron fist had consigned the idea of the region's independence to history.

"It is absolutely critical that independent monitors as well as humanitarian organisations get access to the people in Nagorno-Karabakh who still have dire needs," Power later said during a visit to the village of Kornidzor on the Azeri border.

She also announced $11.5 million in emergency U.S. aid for Karabakh.

Asked if she believed Azerbaijani forces had committed atrocities against civilians or combatants in Karabakh, she said: "We have heard very troubling reports of violence against civilians. At the same time given the chaos here and the trauma, the gathering of testimonies… of the people who have come across is something that is just beginning."

Ethnic Armenians who managed to get to Armenia have given harrowing accounts of fleeing death, war and hunger.

Some said they saw many dead civilians – one said truckloads. Others, some with young children, broke down in tears as they described a tragic odyssey of running from war, sleeping on the ground and with hunger churning in their bellies.

"We took what we could and left. We don’t know where we’re going. We have nowhere to go," Petya Grigoryan, a 69-year-old driver, told Reuters in the border town of Goris on Sunday.

Reuters was unable to independently verify accounts of the military operation inside Karabakh. Azerbaijan has said it targeted only Karabakh fighters.

The Azerbaijani victory changes the balance of power in the South Caucasus region, a patchwork of ethnicities crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines where Russia, the United States, Turkey and Iran are jostling for influence.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenia had relied on a security partnership with Russia, while Azerbaijan grew close to Turkey, with which it shares linguistic and cultural ties.

Armenia has lately sought closer ties with the West and blames Russia, which had peacekeepers in Karabakh but is now preoccupied with the war in Ukraine, for failing to protect Karabakh. Moscow denies blame and has told Pashinyan that he is making a big mistake by flirting with the United States.

The Kremlin said Russia's President Vladimir Putin discussed the Karabakh situation on Tuesday with President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran, which shares borders with both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Aliyev hinted on Monday at the prospect of creating a land corridor to Turkey across Armenia. Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan, who met Aliyev on Monday, said on Tuesday such a corridor must be completed.

Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, told Washington to stop stoking anti-Russian sentiment in Armenia.

Reporting by Felix Light NEAR KORNIDZOR, Armenia, Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Gareth Jones; Editing by Peter Graff and Alex Richardson

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-us-trade-diplomatic-blame-over-instability-karabakh-crisis-2023-09-26/

At least 20 dead in gas station explosion as Nagorno-Karabakh residents flee to Armenia

Associated Press
Sept 26 2023

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — At least 20 people were killed and nearly 300 others were injured in an explosion at a crowded gas station in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region as thousands of ethnic Armenians rushed to flee into neighboring Armenia, the separatist territory’s authorities said Tuesday.

Some 19,000 people — about 16% of the region’s population — have fled across the border since Azerbaijan defeated separatists who have governed the breakaway region for about 30 years in a swift military operation last week, according to Armenian’s Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan.

Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh scrambled to flee as soon as Azerbaijan lifted a 10-month blockade on the region’s only road to Armenia. That blockade had caused severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel. While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of Armenians, many residents feared reprisals.

“I think we’re going to see the vast majority of people in Karabakh leaving for Armenia,” said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank. “They are being told to integrate into Azerbaijan, a country that they’ve never been part of, and most of them don’t even speak the language and are being told to dismantle their local institutions. That’s an offer that most people in Karabakh will not accept.”

The explosion took place as people lined up to fill their cars at a gas station outside Stepanakert, the region’s capital, late on Monday. The separatist government’s health department said that 13 bodies have been found and seven people have died of injuries from the blast. An additional 290 people have been hospitalized and scores of them remain in grave condition.

The cause of the blast remains unclear, but Nagorno-Karabakh presidential aide David Babayan said initial information suggested that it resulted from negligence, adding that sabotage was unlikely.

Armenia’s health ministry said a helicopter brought some blast victims to Armenia on Tuesday morning, and more flights were expected. The Russian peacekeeping force in Nagorno-Karabakh also provided helicopters to carry victims to Armenia.

Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev said on X, formerly Twitter, that hospitals in Azerbaijan were ready to treat victims, but did not say if any had been taken there. Azerbaijan has sent in burn-treatment medicine and other humanitarian aid, he said.

Azerbaijan also said Tuesday that 30 metric tons (33 U.S. tons) of gasoline and 34 metric tons (37 U.S. tons) of diesel fuel were being sent into the region.

The Azerbaijani military routed Armenian forces in a 24-hour blitz last week, forcing the separatist authorities to agree to lay down weapons and start talks on Nagorno-Karabakh’s “reintegration” into Azerbaijan.

Gasoline has been in short supply in Stepanakert for months, and the explosion further added to the shortages, compounding anxiety among many residents about whether they will be able drive the 35 kilometers (22 miles) to the border.

Cars bearing large loads on their roofs crowded the streets of Stepanakert, and residents stood or lay along sidewalks next to heaps of luggage.

Nagorno-Karabakh authorities asked residents to hold off on leaving in order to keep the road clear for emergency services and said buses would be provided for those who want to leave.

Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region within Azerbaijan under the Soviet Union. Separatist sentiment grew in the USSR’s dying years and then flared into war. Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, after a six-year separatist war that ended in 1994.

In another war in 2020, Azerbaijan took parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and completely reclaimed surrounding territory that it lost earlier. Under the armistice that ended the 2020 fighting, Russia deployed a peacekeeping force of about 2,000 to the region. Russia’s influence in the region has waned amid its war in Ukraine, emboldening Azerbaijan and its main ally, Turkey.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has blamed Moscow, the country’s main ally, of failing to prevent the hostilities, accusations the Kremlin has angrily rejected. The Russian Foreign Ministry retorted, denouncing Pashinyan’s statement as an “attempt to shift responsibility for failures in domestic and foreign policies onto Moscow” and part of efforts to take Armenia out of Russia’s orbit in favor of forging stronger ties with the West.

“The Armenian leadership is making a huge mistake by deliberately attempting to sever Armenia’s multifaceted and centuries-old ties with Russia, making the country a hostage to Western geopolitical games,” the ministry said in Monday’s statement.

It denied allegations that Moscow was fomenting the protests in Yerevan calling for Pashinyan’s ouster.

De Waal predicted that political infighting in Armenia would increase.

“We’re going to see unstable days in Armenia with various forces trying to get rid of Pashinyan and others on the contrary trying to defend him because they fear some kind of Russian-backed attempt to get rid of him,” he said.

Associated Press writers Aida Sultanova and Emma Burrows in London and Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

https://apnews.com/article/nagorno-karabakh-explosion-armenia-azerbaijan-e882628cc8a3895ddd23fd79d333b996

Photos: Thousands of ethnic Armenians flee from Nagorno-Karabakh

Al-Jazeera, Qatar
Sept 26 2023
Ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh walk along the road from Nagorno-Karabakh to Kornidzor in the Syunik region of Armenia. [Vasily Krestyaninov/AP Photo]

Hungry and exhausted ethnic Armenian families are fleeing their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan defeated separatist forces in the breakaway region last week.

The ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh – part of Azerbaijan that had been beyond Baku’s control since the dissolution of the Soviet Union – began fleeing into Armenia this week after separatist forces were routed in a lightning operation by Azerbaijan’s military.

At least 19,000 of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians who call Nagorno-Karabakh home have already crossed into Armenia, Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan was quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency as saying, with hundreds of cars and buses crammed with belongings snaking down the mountain road out of Azerbaijan.

Hungry and exhausted ethnic Armenian families are fleeing their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan defeated separatist forces in the breakaway region last week.

The ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh – part of Azerbaijan that had been beyond Baku’s control since the dissolution of the Soviet Union – began fleeing into Armenia this week after separatist forces were routed in a lightning operation by Azerbaijan’s military.

At least 19,000 of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians who call Nagorno-Karabakh home have already crossed into Armenia, Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan was quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency as saying, with hundreds of cars and buses crammed with belongings snaking down the mountain road out of Azerbaijan.

See all the photos at https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/9/26/photos-thousands-of-ethnic-armenians-flee-from-nagorno-karabakh



Armenian parliamentary committee to discuss ratification of Rome Statute on September 28

 12:18,

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 26, ARMENPRESS. An Armenian parliamentary committee will discuss the ratification of the Rome Statute of the ICC on September 28.

The Armenian government on September 1 sent the Rome Statute to parliament for ratification.

In 2022, the Pashinyan Administration explained that it seeks to join the Rome Statute because it would allow to hold the government of Azerbaijan to account for its aggressions against Armenia.

The bill will be discussed at the Parliamentary Committee on State-Legal Affairs.

USAID chief visits Goris, Syunik

 13:38,

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 26, ARMENPRESS. USAID Administrator Samantha Power has arrived in Syunik as part of her Armenia trip.

In Goris, she was welcomed by Syunik Governor Robert Ghukasyan.

Goris is now receiving thousands of forcibly displaced Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Vehicles are lined up several kilometers along the Lachin Corridor.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power and U.S. State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Yuri Kim arrived in Armenia on September 25 to affirm U.S. support for Armenia’s sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and democracy and to address humanitarian needs stemming from the recent violence in Nagorno-Karabakh.

[see video]

Nagorno-Karabakh representatives, Azeri authorities hold second meeting, third round set to take place in Stepanakert

 18:26,

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS. Nagorno-Karabakh representatives and Azerbaijani authorities held their second meeting today in Ivanyan (Khojaly.)

According to a statement released by the Azeri government, issues related to a number of humanitarian issues were discussed.

An agreement was reached to hold another meeting in the coming days. The third meeting will be held in Stepanakert. Azerbaijan will be represented by Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev at the meeting.