The attacks forced over 10,000 people, including women, children, and elderly, to evacuate their homes, according to the Artsakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This week’s escalation was the first indication of large-scale outright military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh since 2020. Christian Armenians have been trapped, without food or medicine, behind the Lachin Corridor blockade for months sparking outrage among human rights activists who say Azerbaijan is engaged in ethnic cleansing.
On Wednesday the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan said that “an agreement has been reached as of 13:00, 20 September 2023, to stop the anti-terror measures.”
The terms of the agreement, according to the Azeri Defense Ministry, were that all “illegal armed groups lay down their arms, withdraw from their battle positions and military outposts, and are subjected to complete disarmament” and “simultaneously, all the ammunition and heavy military equipment is handed over.”
The Azeri government also demanded the withdrawal of all “formations of Armenia’s armed forces stationed in the Karabakh region,” though Armenia denies it has any forces stationed inside Nagorno-Karabakh.
In a Wednesday press briefing, Azeri Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Fariz Rzayev said that “as a result of the counterterrorism measures taken by the Azerbaijani armed forces, the agreement was reached today for the full demilitarization, disarmament, and disbandment of the remnants of the regular forces of the Republic of Armenia, which were still illegally deployed in the sovereign territories in the Republic of Azerbaijan.”