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In the fighting for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict region, many more people died than were known. In mid-November, after the end of the military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Armenian side reported that more than 2,300 had died. Until now, official information from Azerbaijan is pending.
Now, the Baku government announced that at least 2,783 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in the war. More than 100 military personnel are still missing and the same number has yet to be identified with DNA tests, the Defense Ministry said. 1,245 injured are still in treatment.
More than 5000 dead in total
So far, Azerbaijan has not disclosed figures regarding censorship in force under martial law. In total, more than 5,000 people died in the conflict that lasted from September 27 to November 9. About 90,000 people, corresponding to about 60 percent of the Nagorno-Karabakh population, fled during the fighting.
Azerbaijan sees itself as the winner in the 44-day conflict. The ceasefire agreement between Baku and Yerevan stipulates that both parties to the conflict can keep the areas in which they currently have control; for Armenia this means great territorial losses.
When the Azerbaijani casualty figures were announced, the soldiers were said to have died in a “patriotic war”. The presidential office declared that the second Nagorno-Karabakh war went down in history as a patriotic war in which Nagorno-Karabakh was “liberated from an enemy invasion after almost 30 years of Armenian occupation.”
Nagorno-Karabakh had unilaterally declared its independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was followed by a war with 30,000 deaths in the 1990s. The self-proclaimed republic is not yet internationally recognized and is considered part of Azerbaijan under international law. However, it is mainly inhabited by Armenians, which is why the Yerevan government supported the Nagorno-Karabakh administration for a long time.
Azerbaijan wants to celebrate the seizure of power in the region on December 10 with a military parade, in which Turkish allied President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will also participate. This was reported by the Azerbaijani news agency Turan and the Turkish media.
Ongoing protests in Yerevan
Head of State Ilcham Aliyev declared November 8 as “Victory Day”, to be celebrated annually in the future. On that day, the city of Shusha, which is particularly important for Azerbaijan, was reconquered. After that, Armenia practically gave up and accepted a Russian-negotiated settlement.
Since then, there have been repeated protests against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the Armenian capital Yerevan. He sees himself as a “traitor” because he, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Aliyev, also promised to hand over larger areas to Azerbaijan without a fight. New massive protests are planned in Yerevan this Saturday.
