Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have hailed Baku’s military victory in Nagorno-Karabakh as thousands of ethnic Armenians flee from the breakaway region into Armenia.
Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but has an ethnic Armenian majority, were forced into a ceasefire last week after a 24-hour military operation by the much larger Azerbaijani military.
Several days after the fighting, the first refugees arrived in Armenia on Sunday and 6,650 people have so far entered, Yerevan said on Monday.
Valery Airapetyan, a Nagorno-Karabakh resident who spoke to Al Jazeera, was among those fleeing to Armenia.
“We found a litre of gasoline, ran away and came here,” he said in the middle of his journey out of the region.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that he expected about 120,000 civilians to leave the region for Armenia due to “the danger of ethnic cleansing”.
The majority of Karabakh Armenians do not accept Azerbaijan’s promises to guarantee their rights.
The ethnic Armenian leadership said it would remain in place until all those who wanted to leave what they call Artsakh were able to go. They urged residents to hold back from crowding the roads out but promised free fuel to all those who were leaving.
Nakhchivan is cut off from the rest of Azerbaijan by Armenian territory but forms a slim border with Turkey.
Source: Aljazeera.com
