By Thomas Goltz, Baku

WITH the ink barely dry on the most recent ceasefire between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Armenian forces supported by tanks and helicopter gunships have overrun the last Azeri settlement in the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Reports from the mountain fortress of Shusha remain sketchy, but the number of dead is thought to run into hundreds. The Azeri ministry of defense conceded the fall of the city yesterday, and said survivors, joined by military units in the nearby town of Lachin, had mounted a counterattack. But the geography and readiness of Azeri forces means they have virtually no hope of reining the city.

“It is all uphill, and the Armenians have all the military equipment they need to throw the Azeris right back down,” said a Western observer. “The counterattack is a suicide mission.”

The Armenian government in Yerevan denies it controls the armed bands operating inside Nagorno Karabakh. but the fiction has worn thin, especially with the appearance of heavy weapons. The aim of the assault also appeared to be to create a corridor of land linking the enclave to Armenia.

Shusha was the last big town populated by Azeris in the enclave. Thousands have died in four years of fighting between the Armenian majority and Azeris, who have administered the region since 1923. Up to a 1,000 Azeris were killed, including many women and children, during a massacre in Khodjali in February.

Hussein Sadekov, the Azeri foreign minister, called on the world immunity to isolate Armenia and suggested it should be expelled from the Committee for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), which currently has a delegation in Baku, and the United Nations for its “gross violations” of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

Publication date 05/10/1992

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform