Azerbaijan accuses Karabakh Armenians of burning homes
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A bullet-riddled building is seen in Shusha, in Nagorno-Karabakh.
PHOTO: AFP
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BAKU - Azerbaijan on Saturday accused Karabakh Armenians of burning homes to avoid them falling in the hands of Baku’s advancing forces following its claim of control over the disputed enclave.
The Azerbaijani defence ministry posted a 34-second clip on the X platform, formerly Twitter, with low-resolution aerial images showing a series of small fires.
“Armenian residents set houses on fire en masse in Aghdara,” the defence ministry wrote.
The town of Aghdara had remained under separatist control until Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive into the region
Armenian and separatist officials issued no immediate comment about the allegations.
Some villagers set fire to their homes before fleeing to Armenia after Azerbaijan established control over large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh in a six-week war in 2020.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of mostly Muslim Azerbaijan.
But its status has been under dispute for centuries.
Christian Armenian separatists took hold of the region at the end of a brutal post-Soviet war in the 1990s that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
The following decades of have witnessed bursts of violence and allegations of wide-scale human rights abuses. AFP
