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Ethnic Armenians living in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region began evacuating from the enclave on Sunday, just days after Azerbaijan launched a rapid offensive to retake the territory, prompting local fighters to agree to a ceasefire.
The first evacuees arrived in Armenia on Sunday afternoon local time, the country’s state news agency reported, and by Sunday evening more than 1,000 people had crossed the border into Armenia, the government said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also facilitated the evacuation of 23 wounded patients from the region, the organization said said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
But leaders in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, warned that the initial exodus could quickly escalate into a mass exodus from the enclave as ethnic Armenian residents fear they would face violence or persecution if it did they would decide to stay.
“Our people do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan,” David Babayan, an adviser to the region’s president, told Portal on Sunday. “Ninety-nine percent prefer to leave our historic country.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also called on Azerbaijan on Saturday to “protect civilians and fulfill its obligations to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh,” according to a telephone conversation with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, explained
About 120,000 ethnic Armenians live in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region in the South Caucasus that has been a flashpoint for more than 30 years. In 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a brutal war over territory.
A ceasefire was declared in 1994, leaving Armenia in control of the region, even though it lies within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders. In the decades that followed, there were brief skirmishes along the border. But in 2020, another war broke out and Azerbaijan recaptured parts of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russia, which has ties with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, responded by deploying nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to guard the Lachin Corridor, a road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia that served as a lifeline for the territory.
But in December, Azerbaijan began curbing the flow of people and goods through the corridor and in April set up an official checkpoint, which it said was necessary to prevent arms smuggling. The move angered Armenians, who directed their anger at Russia.
The blockade and surprise attack “raise serious questions … about the goals and motives of the Russian Federation’s peacekeepers,” Pashinyan said in a speech on Sunday.
Azerbaijan launched its lightning-fast offensive on September 19, calling it an “anti-terror” operation and calling on forces in Nagorno-Karabakh to lay down their weapons.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit data collection and crisis mapping initiative, the operation included drone and artillery strikes around the capital Stepanakert and in other cities to the north and south.
The attacks using large-caliber artillery, drones and mortars caused “dozens of civilian casualties, including children, displaced several thousand local residents and damaged residential buildings and infrastructure,” the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights said in a statement.
On September 20, Nagorno-Karabakh’s armed forces agreed to complete disarmament. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry claimed victory and said all weapons and heavy equipment would be handed over and that Armenian forces would leave the area.
But the fate of the Armenian population remained unclear. Pashinyan said on Sunday that 30 percent of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population had been displaced and that humanitarian aid from Russia and the ICRC was limited. According to the Associated Press, thousands of people from villages affected by the fighting were taken to a Russian peacekeepers’ camp.
“There is no food, no medicine, no shelter, no place to go, they are separated from their families, terrorized and fearful for their lives,” he said.
After the victory in Azerbaijan’s 24-hour ground and artillery offensive, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced on Wednesday the restoration of sovereignty and promised that his Muslim country would enable Christian Armenians to live together in the future.