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On Sunday, Armenia was due to start handing over the disputed territory to Azerbaijan as part of a peace agreement that ended six weeks of fierce fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Residents of Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar district, which was controlled by Armenian separatists for decades, began a mass exodus from the mountainous province in the days leading up to the official day of withdrawal.
AFP journalists saw fleeing residents piling furniture and kitchen utensils into vehicles before leaving for Armenia, and some of the departing ethnic Armenians said they had exhumed graves that they feared the Azerbaijanis would desecrate.
Thick plumes of smoke rose over the valley near the village of Charektar after residents set their houses on fire, preferring to leave devastation in their wake and houses that would be uninhabitable for Azerbaijanis.
A Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed this week in Nagorno-Karabakh. They established checkpoints and positions in the region’s administrative center, Stepanakert, as part of the terms of the agreement that sees Armenia cede swaths of territory that Azerbaijani forces won in the fighting.
Moscow’s peacekeeping mission, which according to the army included soldiers previously stationed in Syria, comprises about 2,000 soldiers for a renewable five-year mission.
Former Soviet rivals agreed to end hostilities earlier this week after efforts by Russia, France and the United States to achieve a ceasefire failed during nearly two months of fighting.
A key part of the peace agreement includes the return of Kalbajar to Armenia, as well as the Aghdam district by November 20 and the Lachin district by December 1, which have been in the hands of the Armenians since a devastating war in The 1990s.
Armenia admitted on Saturday that 2,317 fighters were killed in clashes in which both sides accused the other of attacking civilian infrastructure.
Azerbaijan has not disclosed its military casualties and the actual death toll after weeks of fighting is expected to be much higher.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the death toll had exceeded 4,000 and that tens of thousands of people had been forced to flee their homes.
Before leaving en masse, Armenians flocked to Dadivank monastery, located in a gorge in Kalbajar, for a final visit before it was ceded to Azerbaijan, and AFP journalists witnessed a dozen women asking to be baptized. in the religious place.
Kalbajar was almost exclusively populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis before the Armenians drove them out in the war of the 1990s following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and most of the abandoned houses were formerly owned by Azerbaijanis.
The Armenian government controversially subsidized the settlement of the region by ethnic Armenians.
The peace agreement with Azerbaijan has sparked a week of protests in Armenia, where demonstrations and opposition parties call for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Former Armenian national security service chief Artur Vanetsyan was arrested Saturday on charges of conspiring to kill Pashinyan and seize power.
Azerbaijan has pushed for Ankara to participate in the deal and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week that his country would jointly oversee the ceasefire with Russia.
Turkey, a key ally of Azerbaijan, was widely accused by western countries Russia and Armenia of sending mercenaries from Syria to reinforce the Azerbaijani army.
But Russia ruled out Ankara’s direct involvement in the peacekeeping mission, insisting instead that Turkey would monitor the mission from an observation center on Azerbaijani territory.
