More than 28,000 people have arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, the government in Yerevan said on September 26 amid a massive exodus that followed an Azerbaijani offensive that gave Baku complete control of the mountainous region.
The Armenian government said that as of 8 p.m. local time the number of people who had entered was 28,120, and registration had already been completed for 20,800 of them. The government is providing housing for all who do not have a place to go.
The Armenian Health Ministry, meanwhile, said the number of deaths from an explosion that occurred on September 25 at a gas station near the enclave's capital, Stapanakert, had risen to 125.
Nagorno-Karabakh authorities said earlier on September 26 that at least 20 people were killed and nearly 300 others injured in the explosion, which occurred as people seeking to flee to Armenia lined up to fuel their cars in order to leave the region.
The cause of the blast has not been determined.
Azerbaijan opened the only road leading from the region to Armenia on September 24, four days after a cease-fire agreement that ended a lightning military operation.
Baku has pledged equal treatment for mainly ethnic Armenian residents who are fleeing, but the Armenian government has warned of possible “ethnic cleansing.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that he must protect civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Blinken spoke by phone with Aliyev to underscore “the urgency of no further hostilities” and to state that there be “unconditional protections and freedom of movement for civilians,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
Blinken also told Aliyev that there must be unhindered humanitarian access to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Samantha Power, the top official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said Baku's use of force was unacceptable, and she called on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to protect ethnic Armenians’ rights.
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She said it was "absolutely critical" that independent monitors and aid organizations be given access to people in Nagorno-Karabakh, and she later announced a $11.5-million package of humanitarian aid for Armenia.
In Brussels, envoys from Baku and Yerevan met with European Council diplomats in the first such encounter since Azerbaijan's recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh following a nine-month blockade of the region that Armenian officials said had deprived the enclave's residents of food, medicine, and other essentials.
The EU stressed in a statement the need for transparency and access for international humanitarian and human rights groups and for more detail on Baku’s vision for Karabakh Armenians’ future in Azerbaijan.
During the meeting Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy adviser to Aliyev, outlined Azerbaijan’s plans to provide humanitarian assistance and security to the local population.
The meeting also discussed a possible meeting of Nagorno-Karabakh stakeholders on October 5 in Granada.
"The participants took note of the shared interest of Armenia and Azerbaijan to make use of the possible meeting in Granada to continue their normalization efforts," the statement said.
Armenian representative Armen Grigorian and Hajiyev "engaged in talks on possible concrete steps to advance the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process in the upcoming possible meeting, such as those with regard to border delimitation, security, connectivity, humanitarian issues, and the broader peace treaty," the statement said.
The statement added that the EU believes that the meeting should be used by both Yerevan and Baku to reiterate publicly their commitment to each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty in line with previous agreements.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars in the last three decades over the region, which had been a majority ethnic Armenian enclave within the internationally recognized border of Azerbaijan since the Soviet collapse.
The region initially came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. During a war in 2020, however, Azerbaijan took back parts of Nagorno-Karabakh along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed during the earlier conflict.
That fighting ended with a Russia-brokered cease-fire and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers. Those peacekeepers did little, however, to prevent the advances by Azerbaijani forces.