Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh – An elderly couple walks slowly towards one of the few remaining open stores in the city. A car full of men in work uniforms, saluting as it passes, heads toward the eastern edge of town and the front line. Journalists in front of the Europa Hotel, wearing helmets and ballistic jackets, plan their day.
The wail of air sirens is a common feature, forcing anyone outside to rush for cover.
This is a scene in Stepanakert, the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh, or the capital of the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh, as it is known to Armenians.
Three weeks after the war, it is a ghost town, its population has fled to shelters or more towards Armenia.
There are generally about 55,000 people in the city, representing about a third of the total population of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Stepanakert is normally bustling and is somehow more modern than the cities of Armenia except Yerevan. An influx of donations from wealthy Armenians from the diaspora has resulted in roads, clinics and hotels that would not be out of place in a European capital.
Now the few civilians left here are destined for clandestine life in shelters.
“We came here the morning of September 27, the first day of the fighting,” says Anyuta, 32. 
Originally from Martakert, now a key front-line city in the disputed mountain region, she and her two young children have spent more than two weeks in the bunker.
Anyuta’s spirits are high, as is her son, who smiles and waves.
“We are doing well here. It’s safe and we have supplies. “
Like most others, he has family on the front line.
“My brother stayed behind, he is fighting [in Martakert] now, ”he said. His father is also fighting the Azerbaijani forces.
“They don’t need him to fight, but he wants to.”
But not all stick together too.
“My sister’s husband died in the first war [from 1988-1994]”Nurvard, 69, said in a shaky voice. “My sister’s son died two days ago. We had his funeral in the evening. His mother didn’t even see her son’s body. “
His family has given much to the conflict.
“I have four grandchildren fighting on the front lines right now,” he said. “One of them died three days ago. The others are still there. What do the Turks want from us?
She breaks down in tears and turns around.
Armenia and Azerbaijan renewed their decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh in late September. The region is within Azerbaijan but is run by ethnic Armenians who want to separate or join Armenia.
Casualties on the front line have been severe.
As of October 15, according to Armenian officials, the deaths of 604 Armenian and Karabakh soldiers had been confirmed.
With a combined population of just three million, that’s the equivalent of the United States losing more than 60,000 men in less than three weeks of fighting.
Azerbaijan does not give details of its military casualties, but it is widely understood that the death toll across the board is higher than what has been officially recorded so far.
As you tour Stepanakert, it is clear that the carnage has not been limited to the battlefield.
Most of the city remains intact, but there are pockets of great destruction.
In one area, a two-meter-deep (6.5-foot) crater stretches on both sides of the road; in another, the twisted metal of what was once a car stands in front of a destroyed house.
The current number of civilians killed in Karabakh, according to the latest report released on Sunday by Artak Beglaryan, the territory’s human rights ombudsman, is 31.
Women take refuge in a bomb shelter during the military conflict in Stepanakert [AP]
Another 106 civilians have been injured, some reportedly by cluster munitions, an internationally prohibited weapon.
Amnesty International said on 5 October that it had identified “Israeli-made M095 DPICM cluster munitions that appear to have been fired by Azerbaijani forces.”
Azerbaijan has also accused Armenia of using cluster munitions.
The two sides regularly deny each other’s claims about the attacks.
Missile strikes have also failed to save critical civilian infrastructure.
The shelling at the Stepanakert main power plant resulted in a city-wide blackout on October 3.
“It is very visible that Azerbaijan is making an effort to break down the civil infrastructure,” Beglaryan told Al Jazeera. “They have affected electricity, communications, gas supply systems and others. This can have a great effect as winter approaches. “
Some of these effects are already evident. Although the city’s electricity has been restored, the mobile internet connection is not working in Karabakh.
And while the bombardment has subsided in the past week, it hasn’t stopped.
“This week is much better than the last,” said Vazgen, a 65-year-old taxi driver whose two sons are on the front lines.
“Last Friday, it was so bad that the whole building was shaking.”
He and his friends are unfazed by mermaids. They prefer to spend their time smoking and playing backgammon in the alley outside the shelter.
“If I ran away every time I heard a noise, I wouldn’t have been a good soldier,” he laughs, recalling his military service in the early 1990s.
But even he has his limits.
“My son is in front now,” he said. “We won the war, but we couldn’t finish it. We just passed it on to them. “
An elderly woman throws a piece of glass from her balcony at an apartment building damaged by Azerbaijan artillery shelling during a military conflict in Stepanakert [AP]
According to analysts, the destruction of Stepanakert is unlikely to be accidental.
When asked if Azerbaijan is intentionally targeting civilian areas, Richard Giragosian, director of the Yerevan-based Center for Regional Studies, said: “Of course. I think it’s pretty clear from the cluster bombs, the attack on the church, the indiscriminate fire, that they are. “
Many of the targets hit have no combat value.
“Militarily, it doesn’t make sense,” says Giragosian. “It is a psychological war, a sign of despair. [Azerbaijan is] trying to break the will of the population. “
The International Committee of the Red Cross says hundreds of buildings have already been destroyed in the conflict.
Stepanakert these days feels like the last of the ghost towns that populated the no man’s land between the Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.
The few remaining inhabitants are all that separates the city from being a modern version of Agdam, the city of 50,000 that has lain abandoned and overgrown on the eastern edge of Karabakh for nearly 30 years.
For Lyudmila, a 45-year-old cafeteria worker, she hopes this war will be her last.
“This is already the third war I have seen,” he said, referring to the initial conflict and the so-called Four Day War of 2016. “How many more will there be?”
The distant thud of artillery fire echoes behind his words.
In this photo released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia on Monday, September 28, 2020, people watch state television as they gather in a bomb shelter to protect themselves against the bombings in Stepanakert, the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan. . [Armenian Foreign Ministry via AP]