Azerbaijan takes over last district around Nagorno-Karabakh | Flash News
Azerbaijan takes over last district around Nagorno-Karabakh
Lachin is the last of three regions around Nagorno-Karabakh handed over by Armenia to Azerbaijan under truce.
Soldiers have hoisted the Azerbaijani flag in the final district given up by Armenia under a peace deal that ended weeks of fighting over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
A convoy of Azerbaijani military trucks entered the Lachin district overnight, taking over the last of three regions around Karabakh handed over by Armenia under the Russian-brokered agreement.
AFP journalists saw soldiers raising the Azerbaijani flag over an administrative building in the town of Lachin in the early hours of Tuesday.
Armenia agreed to hand over the three districts – Agdam, Lachin and Kalbajar – as part of the November deal that stopped a conflict that had flared up between the two countries at the end of September.
Under the agreement, some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers deployed between the two sides and along the Lachin corridor, a 60km (37-mile) route through the district that connects Karabakh’s main city Stepanakert to Armenia.
Russian military vehicles accompanied Azerbaijani trucks driving along the corridor overnight and were deployed at the main crossroads in Lachin.
Most of the town’s residents fled in advance of the takeover, but 48-year-old Levon Gevorgyan, the owner of a local grocery store, said he had decided to stay.
“I am afraid only of God. I have been here for 22 years, I started from nothing, I built everything,” he said. “I hope I will be able to continue, I still have a loan to pay. If I have to leave, I will burn everything.”
In a televised address on Tuesday, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev celebrated the dawn of “a new reality”.
“We’ve driven the enemy out of our lands. We’ve restored our territorial integrity. We’ve ended the occupation,” he said.
Nagorno-Karabakh broke from Azerbaijan’s control in a war after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union that left some 30,000 people dead.
The region declared independence but it was never recognised by any country, including Armenia, which strongly backs the ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan.
The peace accord signed on November 9 was reached after six weeks of fighting that saw Azerbaijan’s army overwhelm Armenian-backed forces and threaten to advance on Stepanakert.
Under the agreement, Armenia is losing control of seven districts that it seized around Karabakh in the 1990s.
It is retaining control over most of Karabakh’s Soviet-era territory, but has lost the key town of Shusha.
Aliyev said that nearly 50,000 Azerbaijanis had lived in the Lachin district before the 1990s war and that they would be returning in “the nearest future”.
In Baku on Tuesday, crowds carrying Azerbaijani flags celebrated the takeover of Lachin, an area glorified in a popular Azerbaijani folk song.
Olesya Vartanyan of the International Crisis Group told AFP that while the handover of the last district signalled that the peace deal was “working”, the new status quo remains “unclear”.
“The Moscow-brokered agreement is very precise when it comes to the territories’ handover, but is ambiguous on a number of aspects such as the mandate of Russian peacekeepers and how the life of the local population, both Armenian and Azerbaijani, will be organised,” she said.
Clashes over Nagorno-Karabakh broke out between the ex-Soviet rivals in late September, reigniting the long-simmering conflict over the mountainous region.
The peace deal was reached after six weeks of heavy fighting that saw Azerbaijan's military overwhelm Armenian occupying forces and threatening to advance on Khankendi.
Under the agreement Armenia is losing control of seven regions occupied during the post-Soviet war in the 1990s, which killed 30,000 people and displaced many Azerbaijanis who used to live in the area.
The Armenian forces are retaining control over most of Karabakh's Soviet-era territory though they have lost the key town of Shusha.
Residents of Lachin cleared out frantically ahead of the handover, taking with them livestock, firewood, furniture, even plastic water pipes.
Some residents have also been burning their homes before they leave, and on Monday evening AFP journalists saw two houses on the outskirts of the town of Lachin in flames, sending clouds of thick smoke into the air.
Source:- Flash News and News Agencies