Global Courant
GORIS, Armenia — After the village was bombed so hard that there was no way to bury the truckloads of the dead, he fled with his family, packing whatever belongings that were salvageable into two vans.
Petya Grigoryan is among the first ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh to reach Armenia after a lightning-fast 24-hour Azerbaijani military operation defeated Karabakh’s Armenian forces.
The ethnic Armenians of Karabakh, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, say they will not live as part of Azerbaijan and that almost all 120,000 Armenians there will leave for Armenia.
So far, hundreds have reached Armenia.
Grigoryan, a 69-year-old driver, said his village of Kochoghot, in what Armenians know as Karabakh’s Martakert district, was ravaged by Azerbaijan’s forces. There were two KAMAZ trucks full of civilian casualties in the village, he said.
“There was no place to bury them,” Grigoryan told Reuters after crossing the border through the Lachin corridor into Armenia, where Reuters interviewed him and other refugees in the border town of Goris.
“We took what we could and left. We don’t know where we’re going. We have nowhere to go,” he said.
According to him, forty of the 500 villagers had gotten out.
Reuters could not independently verify his story, but it matched the outline given by other ethnic Armenians fleeing Karabakh, which Azerbaijan says will be turned into a “paradise” and fully integrated.
Azerbaijan said it launched the operation against Karabakh forces after attacks on its own citizens. President Ilham Aliyev said his army had targeted only Karabakh fighters and that civilians had been protected.
STRICT ORDER
“Before the operation, I once again issued a strict order to all our military units that the Armenian population living in the Karabakh region should not be affected by the anti-terrorist measures and that the civilian population should be protected,” he said in a speech. to the nation on September 20.
“Citizens felt fully protected thanks to the professionalism of our armed forces,” he said.
Grigoryan and thousands of other Armenians headed to the airport near Karabakh’s capital, known as Stepanakert by Armenians and Khankendi by Azerbaijan, where some Russian peacekeepers are stationed.
“It was scary there,” he said. Thousands slept on the ground with no food and little water. “There was nothing to eat or drink; three days without food,” he said.
Nairy, a builder from Leninakan, Armenia, said he had been trapped in Karabakh by the blockade since December. The Azerbaijani army then shelled the Shosh village where he was staying.
“The children were injured. We were in the basements until the peacekeepers came in and got the people out,” he said.
He was also on his way to the airport.
“We are extremely grateful to the boys for sharing their rations with the children,” he said. “The Russian peacekeepers were starving to give the children their rations.”
At the airport, he said, thousands were sleeping outside. REUTERS
