Azerbaijani Army Enters Aghdam, First Area Ceded By Armenia

The Azerbaijani army entered the Aghdam district, the first area ceded by Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh.

According to the AFP news agency, Azerbaijan said that under a Russian-mediated agreement, Armenian separatists had regained control of the Aghdam district in Nagorno-Karabakh, where Azerbaijani forces had entered.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said that the army had arrived in one of the three areas returned to Azerbaijan, while the Armenian army and soldiers had evacuated the area a day earlier.

Armenia will return another district of Nagorno-Karabakh, Klubjar, on November 25, and a third district, Lachin, on December 1.

While evacuating the area, Armenians in Aghdam loaded fruit and other items from trees into vehicles and evacuated the mountainous province.

According to the report, Armenians set fire to their homes hours before leaving the area and left nothing for Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a televised address that the Armenians were burning everything while evacuating the area, defaming themselves before the world.

In the capital, Baku, citizens celebrated the victory yesterday with queues of vehicles and the national flag of Azerbaijan, as well as the flags of allies such as Turkey and Russia.

He promised the citizens of Aghdam to return their ancestral lands.

Under last week’s agreement, Armenia pledged to evacuate 15 to 20 per cent of the territory acquired from Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, including the historic city of Shusha.

Read also: Turkish parliament introduces bill to deploy troops in Azerbaijan

Under the ceasefire agreement, Russian and Turkish forces will monitor Nagorno-Karabakh, while Armenians will leave the disputed region.

The Russian and Turkish defence ministers signed a memorandum stating that a joint monitoring centre would be set up in Azerbaijan.

Following the ceasefire agreement, there were violent protests in Armenia against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, calling him a traitor and demanding his resignation.

He urged the protesters to refrain from armed protests and hoped that the opposition would also reject the move.

Armenia and Azerbaijan announced a ceasefire agreement on November 10 after the worst fighting and it was celebrated as a victory in Azerbaijan.

The Armenian prime minister called it a tragedy and said there was no choice but to give up.

Fighting has ended in the internationally recognized Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh following a ceasefire agreement.

The Negro-Karabakh conflict

Azerbaijan and Armenia clashed with separatists in Karabakh shortly after independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, killing 30,000 people in the early years.

Negotiations to resolve the dispute between the two countries from 1994 to the recent war have not made clear progress, but there have been several ceasefire agreements.

Armenian-backed separatists of Armenian descent gained control of the Negrono-Karabakh region from Baku in the 1990s, but Negrono-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

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Later, France, Russia and the United States acted as mediators, but in 2010 the peace agreement was terminated once again.

The latest clashes in Negro-Karabakh began on September 27 and killed at least 23 people on the first day, while Russia and Turkey demanded an immediate end to tensions.

The Nagorno-Karabakh region covers an area of ​​4,400 square kilometres and is 50 kilometres from the Armenian border.