BAKU, KOMPAS.com – Azerbaijan on Thursday (3/12/2020) announced that nearly 2,800 soldiers were killed in the fight Armenia of Nagorno-Karabakh.
This announcement is the first released details of Azerbaijan’s military losses in the 6-week war.
The Defense Ministry in Baku said, “2,783 soldiers of the Azerbaijan armed forces died in the war to defend the country,” adding that the identities of the 103 soldiers had not been obtained through DNA analysis.
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Then 100 more Azerbaijan soldiers disappeared, the statement was quoted as saying by the news agency AFP.
Armenia has previously announced that 2,317 of its soldiers were killed in the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, which also claimed at least 93 Azerbaijani civilians and 50 Armenian civilians.
Meanwhile, around 90,000 people or 60 percent of the population of the disputed area must evacuate.
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The latest Azerbaijan-Armenian war began in late September, reviving the conflict between the two neighboring Caucasus states in the ethnic Armenian enclave of Azerbaijan.
The fighting continued for 6 weeks despite attempts to be reconciled by France, Russia and the United States through a ceasefire.
The two warring parties then signed a peace agreement brokered by Moscow on November 9.
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The agreement was signed after Baku’s army defeated separatist forces, and threatened to advance to Karabakh’s main city, Stepanakert.
The victory was celebrated by Azerbaijan and in turn sparked outrage in Armenia. PM Nikol Pashinyan has been flooded with criticism for agreeing to the deal.
Because in that agreement Armenia lost control of some parts of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the seven adjacent districts they captured in the 1990s war.
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Nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers have been deployed between the two sides and along the Lachin corridor, a 60-kilometer route connecting Stepanakert with Armenia.
Karabakh broke away from Baku in a war in the early 1990s, which claimed around 30,000 lives and displaced tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis.
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