Azerbaijan says 192 of its troops were killed in last week’s offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh
Ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh ride a truck on their way to Kornidzor in Syunik region, Armenia, Sept. 26, 2023. Thousands of Nagorno-Karabakh residents are fleeing their homes after Azerbaijan’s swift military operation to reclaim control of the breakaway region after a three-decade separatist conflict. (Stepan Poghosyan, Photolure photo via AP)
A total of 192 Azerbaijani troops were killed and over 500 were wounded during Azerbaijan’s offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh last week, the country’s Health Ministry announced on Wednesday.
Nagorno-Karabakh officials said earlier that at least 200 people on their side, including 10 civilians, were killed and over 400 were wounded in the fighting.
The military operation allowed Azerbaijan to reclaim full control over the breakaway region that was run by separatists for about 30 years. Tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians have already left the region and more are likely to do so after separatist troops agreed to lay down arms and Azerbaijan lifted a 10-month blockage of the road linking the territory to Armenia.
Azerbaijan and separatist officials have held two rounds of talks on the “reintegration” of Nagorno-Karabakh and its ethnic Armenian population into the mainly Muslim country, but how exactly it would happen remains unclear.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region of Azerbaijan that came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. During a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of Nagorno-Karabakh along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed during the earlier conflict.
In December, Azerbaijan imposed a blockade of the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, alleging that the Armenian government was using the road for mineral extraction and illicit weapons shipments to the region’s separatist forces.
Armenia charged that the closure denied basic food and fuel supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh’s approximately 120,000 people. Azerbaijan rejected the accusation, arguing the region could receive supplies through the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam — a solution long resisted by Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, who called it a strategy for Azerbaijan to gain control of the region.