The End of a State as 100,000 Flee Artsakh

“If you still have clear information about lonely or helpless people left behind in Artsakh, you should contact the International Committee of the Red Cross or provide us with relevant information to be forwarded to the ICRC,” added Stepanyan.

A separate Karabakh government statement issued around the same time said Shahramanyan and a “group of other officials” will stay in Stepanakert until the ongoing search for people who died or went missing as a result of last week’s hostilities and powerful explosion at a local fuel depot is over. They will also help people remaining in Karabakh “for various reasons” and eager to relocate to Armenia, said the statement.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan predicted on Thursday that “there will be no Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh in the coming days.” He accused Azerbaijan of practically finishing “ethnic cleansing” there. Baku rejected the accusations, saying that it still hopes to “reintegrate” the Karabakh Armenians.

Artak Beglaryan, a former Karabakh premier, said late on Saturday that the region is already “almost fully empty, with at most a few hundred people remaining, who are also leaving.”

Karabakh’s population officially stood at around 120,000 prior to the exodus. The figure included thousands of people who were unable to return from Armenia to Stepanakert and other Karabakh towns and villages after Baku blocked traffic through the Lachin corridor last December.

Earlier on Sunday, October 1, Azerbaijan’s prosecutor-general said that Baku wants to arrest and prosecute about 300 current or former political and military leaders of Karabakh. They apparently include three former Karabakh presidents. A Karabakh official told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday that Shahramanyan is trying to convince Azerbaijani authorities to let them as well as other prominent Karabakh Armenians leave the region.