Nagorno-Karabakh: Armenia reports that 100,000 refugees have left the area
According to Armenia, over 100,000 people have left the Nagorno-Karabakh territory.
Since Azerbaijan seized control of the area last week, it means that practically all of the enclave's ethnic Armenian residents have departed.
The region's citizens will be treated equally, according to Azerbaijani claims, but an Armenian spokesman called these claims a "lie."
Since the 1980s, ethnic Armenians have controlled Nagorno-Karabakh, which is officially recognized as being a part of Azerbaijan.
Armenia and its ally, Russia, have both lent support to the South Caucasus' mountainous region.
Azerbaijan's army stormed in, killing at least 200 ethnic Armenians as well as numerous Azerbaijani soldiers. Separatists have agreed to give up their weapons in exchange for a cease-fire.
Understanding the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
Survivors describe the Karabakh assault
The head of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic has declared that it will dissolve in the coming year.
Out of the estimated 120,000 people living in Nagorno-Karabakh, Nazeli Baghdasaryan, the prime minister of Armenia's spokesman, reported that 100,417 refugees had entered the nation in the previous week.
Asserting that 100,000 people had left, the UNHCR noted that many of them "are hungry, exhausted, and need immediate assistance."
"The last groups" of Nagorno-Karabakh people were traveling to Armenia on Saturday, according to Artak Beglaryan, a former official in the Armenian separatist movement.
He posted on social media that there were only "at most a few hundred people left, most of whom are officials, emergency service personnel, volunteers, some persons with special needs."
In addition to those murdered during the military operation by Azerbaijan, a massive explosion at a gasoline station in Nagorno-Karabakh on Monday killed at least 170 people.
What started the explosion close to Khankendi, often known as Stepanakert to Armenians, is still unknown.
The UN has announced that it will send a mission to Nagorno-Karabakh this weekend to evaluate the humanitarian situation after Azerbaijan indicated it would permit such a visit.
The ambassador-at-large for Armenia, Edmon Marukyan, criticized the timing of the visit but emphasized that it was crucial that UN representatives see firsthand what ethnic Armenians had endured.
"It's good they is going there and they will become witnesses that these people being culturally cleansed from their ancestral homeland, to the houses where their parents, where their ancestors had resided, and these people were totally eliminated from this territory," he told the BBC.
The pledges from Azerbaijan, however, were rejected by him as "a lie".
It's pure propaganda—another piece of bogus propaganda from Azerbaijan. Everyone will leave Nagorno-Karabakh, he declared.
