MOSCOW (AP) – Azerbaijan’s president announced Friday that his troops have taken control of the Agdam region, a region backed by Armenia in a ceasefire agreement that ends fighting on Nagorno-Karabakh.
The fighting by Russia last week was a condition that Armenia ceded control of parts of Azerbaijan outside the Nagorno-Karabakh border. Agdham is the first to turn.
“Today, with a sense of infinite pride, I am informing my people about the liberation of Agdam,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an address to the nation. “Agdham is ours!”
Crowds carrying the national flag gathered in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to celebrate the acquisition of the territory of Agdam.
Nagorno-Karabakh is located in Azerbaijan, but has been under the control of Armenian-backed ethnic Armenian forces since a separatist war ended there in 1994.
The heavy fighting that lasted until September 27 marked the largest escalation of the decades-old conflict between the two former Soviet countries in the quarter-century, in which hundreds and possibly thousands were killed.
Conflict escalated last week after several failed attempts to establish a permanent ceasefire. It came two days after Azerbaijan made significant progress, announcing the capture of the strategically important city of Shusha.
Aliyev noted on Friday that Azerbaijan occupies the territory of Agdam “without a single shot (fired) or damage (suffered),” calling it a “great political success” that would not have been possible without military gain.
The President said that Azerbaijan was able to achieve what it wanted in the political arena after a resounding victory on the battlefield.
Celebrated as a victory in Azerbaijan, the agreement has angered many Armenians. Then, immediately after the peace agreement was announced last week, displayed Armenian capital, Yerevan massive protests, and many people are leaving ethnic Armenian delegation to Azerbaijan and regions have set up their houses with fire signs goodbye.
Although the recapture of the region is a victory for Azerbaijan, the joy of returning goes through grief and anger. The region’s main city, Agdam, once had about 50,000 houses, known for its white houses and spacious three-story chaos, but it is so ruined that it is sometimes called “Hiroshima of the Caucasus.”
After the population was driven out by fighting in 1993, behind them were Armenian pillars, which plundered the city, searching for both loot and building materials. The Bread Museum, one of the city’s delights, is in ruins. The cognac factory is gone.
Today, the only structurally complete building is a mosque; From the top of the expanded patterned minarets, the view is a vast area of waste concrete and the houses have fallen into shells, all of which are surrounded by fourth-century vegetation growth.
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Ida Sultanova, an Associated Press writer in London, contributed to this report.
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