Debris on a street in Stepanakert on September 20. ARMENIAN SEPARATIST AUTHORITIES / AFP
Azerbaijani authorities announced on Wednesday, September 20, a ceasefire and the start of negotiations with a view to reintegrating the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. For their part, the Armenian separatists announced that they would lay down their weapons and confirmed the ceasefire and the start of negotiations that will take place on Thursday in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh.
“An agreement was reached on the withdrawal of the remaining units and soldiers of the Armenian Armed Forces (…) as well as on the disbandment and complete disarmament of the armed formations of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army,” he said presidential separatist. The agreement should come into force from 1:00 p.m. local time (11:00 a.m. Paris time). Armenia “did not take part” in drafting the ceasefire agreement, said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
There were still explosions in Nagorno-Karabakh early this morning. On Tuesday, the Azerbaijani army launched a military operation in this secessionist region populated mainly by Armenians, over which Baku and Yerevan have been disputed for decades.
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According to Anahit Manassian, the official in charge of human rights protection for the Armenian authorities, the clashes reportedly left at least “32 dead” and “more than 200 injured.” These figures could not be independently verified.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev had set the condition for a ceasefire that the separatists “lay down their weapons”. “The civilian population and infrastructure will not be attacked, only legitimate military targets will be destroyed,” Mr. Aliyev assured U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
Images posted on social networks showed that numerous debris and destroyed vehicles littered certain streets of Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert (Armenian name) or Khankendi (Azerbaijani name). On Tuesday, the city had already come under “intense fire,” according to the statement by the separatists in Armenia on Facebook.
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“There is no need to leave the building at the moment. We ask you to respect the safety rules and stay in the basements and bomb shelters,” the town hall urged Stepanakert residents in a press release on Wednesday morning.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry, which has been leading a peacekeeping mission since the last war in 2020, announced on Telegram that it had evacuated “more than 2,000 civilians” from the “most dangerous” areas of the region, “including 1,049.” Children”.
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Armenian separatist authorities also organized an emergency meeting of the breakaway region’s Security Council on Wednesday. At this meeting, the separatists complained about an “inadequate reaction from the international community (…),” said a Press release published on X (formerly Twitter) from the Foreign Ministry of the secessionist authorities.
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An operation launched after the deaths of six Azerbaijanis
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Armenian government headquarters on Tuesday, September 19, demanding Mr. Pashinian’s resignation. In view of the demonstrators, the police closed the entrances to the government building. The police line, which had been the target of bottle throwing, fought off a crowd of demonstrators that evening who urged them to enter the building, whose entrance windows were broken. KAREN MINASYAN / AFP
The trigger for the military operation was the death of four police officers and two Azerbaijani civilians in a mine explosion in Nagorno-Karabakh on the night of Monday to Tuesday. Baku had accused a group of Armenian separatist “saboteurs” of committing these “acts of terrorism”.
It comes against the backdrop of renewed tensions between the two countries over the fate of the enclave. In early August, Armenia called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council given the “deteriorating humanitarian situation” in the region. The Lachin Corridor, the only land route between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, was initially blocked by Azerbaijanis posing as environmental protesters before Baku set up a road blockade on July 11.
Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority mountainous region in Azerbaijan, was the scene of two wars in the early 1990s and then in the fall of 2020. It is one of the most heavily mined areas in the former USSR. Explosions there regularly cause deaths.