Stepaniyan: At least 200 killed and 400 wounded in Azerbaijan's attack on Nagorno-Karabakh

At least 200 people were killed and 400 were wounded in Azerbaijan's military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited by Armenians, they announced.

This was announced on social networks by the representative for the defense of human rights in Nagorno-Karabakh, Gegham Stepaniyan.

On Tuesday, Azerbaijan launched a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, which ended after 24 hours with an agreement with the Armenians to lay down their arms and negotiate the reintegration of that breakaway territory into Azerbaijan. Negotiations are scheduled for tomorrow.

Today, after the signing of the ceasefire, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced on television that Azerbaijan has "re-established its sovereignty in Nagorno-Karabakh".

Aliyev said that "the separatists have begun to lay down their arms and leave their military positions" in accordance with the ceasefire agreement.

He said his army had "destroyed most" of the forces and equipment of the "separatists" who have controlled the rugged mountainous region since the first war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed.

"The process of withdrawing illegal Armenian units from their positions has begun. They accepted our conditions and began to lay down their arms. Azerbaijan has re-established sovereignty thanks to successful anti-terrorist measures," Aliyev said.

Azerbaijan called its operation in Nagorno-Karabakh "anti-terrorist".

Aliyev unusually praised the attitude of neighboring Armenia, his country's great rival, which yesterday and today did not send soldiers to defend Nagorno-Karabakh.

He assessed that this position of Armenia will have a positive impact on the peace process.

He promised to respect all the rights of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, which has a population of 145.000, although Russia and local authorities have already evacuated thousands of them as a precaution.

Aliyev admitted that there were dead and wounded Azerbaijanis in the clashes, but he did not say how many.

The warring parties are to meet tomorrow in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh for the first talks on the "reintegration" of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan.

In Yerevan, protesters, outraged because the Prime Minister of Armenia did not defend Nagorno-Karabakh, threw bottles and stones at the police in front of the Government headquarters, according to a journalist from France Presse.

The police used stun grenades and warned that they would resort to "special measures" if order was not restored.

The mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh and part of the surrounding territories have been under Armenian control since the end of the separatist war in 1994, but Azerbaijan regained the territories in a six-week war in 2020.

The war ended with a ceasefire brokered by Russia, and since then a contingent of Russian peacekeepers has been in Nagorno-Karabakh.

However, Azerbaijan claims that after the armistice, Armenia smuggles weapons into the area. Because of these claims, the only mountain road that connects Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia was blocked, which caused a shortage of both food and medicine in that region.