HUNDREDS of Azeri civilians, including children, probably drowned in the River Aras fleeing the latest Armenian advance in south west Azerbaijan, according to the head of the United Nations mission in Baku, Mamoud el-Said. “Twenty thousand people escaped in Iran, but three times as many are still in danger,” he said last night. In the […]

ABOUT 2,000 Azerbarbaijani refugees from the war in Nagorno-Karabakh are living in abandoned railway carriages at Saatli, near the Iranian border, writes Suzanne Goldenberg. Their plight is the most pitiful of the 1 million  Azeris who have lost their homes during six years of war between Azerbaijan and Armenian separatists. About 60,000 people are living […]

Armenia is pushing a new wave of displaced people towards Iran. JONATHAN RUGMAN in Kanliq, south-west Azerbaijan, reports ON THE main road south through Kubatli province, thousands of men, women and children are packed into trucks at an Azeri checkpoint waiting for permission to leave. Helicopters shuttle in and out with the wounded, while a […]

By Jon Auerbach GLOBE CORRESPONDENT CHAKHARLI, Azerbaijan – The truckloads of scared and lost children, the sobbing mothers, the stench of sickness and the sea of blank faces in this mud-covered refugee camp obscure the deeper issue of why tens of thousands of Azeris have fled here. Beneath the tears and suffering in Chakharli is […]

Flickers of hope brighten shelters Armenians are strengthened by recent military successes, writes Karl Waldron in Stepanakert, capital of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh Each evening reconnaissance groups move from the rubble of Nagorno-Karabakh’s devastated capital, Stepanakert, towards the Azeri lines: old men, young men, and women, heavily armed, heading across a tortuous, mountain terrain […]

Mass murder raises fear of total war in crumbling empire By Thomas Goltz, Aghdam, Azerbaijan The spiraling violence gripping the outer republics of the former Soviet Union gained new impetus yesterday with the cold-blooded slaughter of hundreds of women and children in war-racked Nagorno-Karabakh. Survivors reported that Armenian soldiers shot and bayoneted more than 450 […]

Refugees and fresh graves confirm massacre by Armenians From Helen Womack in Agdam, Azerbaijan THE EXACT number of victims is still unclear, but there can be little doubt that Azeri civilians were massacred by Armenian fighters in the snowy mountains of Nagorny Karabakh last week. Refugees from the enclave town of Khojaly, sheltering in the  […]

From Helen Womack in Agdam, Azerbaijan AZERI officials say as many as 600 civilians may have survived last week’s massacre in the mountains of Nagorny Karabakh and are trying to negotiate their release from Armenian captivity. Yesterday the prosecutor in the Azeri border town of Agdam interviewed a woman who was among five Azeri hostages […]