YEREVAN: Armenia on Saturday he said that more than two thousand fighters died in six weeks of clashes with Azerbaijan about the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“To date, our forensic service has examined the bodies of 2,317 dead military personnel, including unidentified ones,” Armenian Ministry of Health spokeswoman Alina Nikoghosyan wrote on Facebook.
The updated death toll on the Armenian side increases their deaths by almost 1,000 compared to the latest confirmed number among Armenian fighters.
Nearly two months of fierce fighting between former Soviet rivals ended this week with a Russian-brokered peace deal that sees Armenia cede swaths of territory captured by Azerbaijani forces.
The Baku army has never disclosed details of its military deaths, but the total human cost of the fighting is expected to be much higher than reported.
Russian president Vladimir Putin He said on Friday that the death toll in the conflict was over 4,000 and that some 8,000 people had been injured.
At least 143 civilians have been confirmed dead in the clashes.
Putin said that tens of thousands of people had been displaced by heavy fighting that also left “civil infrastructure and numerous cultural sites” destroyed.
The peace agreement stipulates that Azerbaijani forces will maintain control over areas taken in the fighting, including the second-largest city of Shusha, while Armenia agreed on a timetable to withdraw from much of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
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