ArmInfo. Within a very short period, over 100,000 Karabakh Armenians fled their homes and headed to Armenia as a result of Azerbaijan's military operation in the region in September 2023. This is stated in the Council of Europe's body ECRI in its Annual report 2023 released today
ECRI identifies the situation of people displaced by war, the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism as a result of the current conflict in the Middle East as key challenges for 2023 and beyond.
On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan, under the pretext of an "anti-terrorist operation", committed another act of aggression against Artsakh. This was preceded by an almost 10-month blockade of Artsakh. As a result of the enemy aggression, hundreds of Artsakh residents were injured, and more than 200 people were reported killed, including civilians. On September 20, Artsakh fell. Azerbaijan began the violent subjugation of the NKR. On September 22, the process of abolishing the Artsakh Defense Army began. During search operations from September 21 to 24, the NKR Ministry of Internal Affairs discovered the bodies of 105 Artsakh residents, including brutally murdered children and the elderly. Today, Artsakh is completely de-Armenianized, its entire indigenous population of over 100 thousand people was forced to flee to Armenia under the threat of physical violence. Since the enemy aggression that began in the fall of 2020, which in September 2023 ended with the complete ethnic cleansing of Artsakh, over 150 thousand Artsakh residents have become homeless.