During the ethnic Armenian evacuation from the contentious province, a gasoline storage detonated.
Armenian media outlets reported on Tuesday that the explosion at a fuel store on Monday in Nagorno-Karabakh resulted in at least 125 fatalities. As the area was being taken over by Azerbaijan, tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians fled it.
According to Pan Armenian News and Health Minister Anahit Avanesian, 125 people’s bodies were shipped to Armenia on Monday. Following the explosion, initial reports put the dead toll at 29, with close to 300 injured and an undetermined number missing.
The fuel depot, which was near Stepanakert (also known as Khankendi in Azerbaijan), the self-declared regional capital, blew up on Monday as long lines of people waited to fill up their cars. A large cloud of oily, black smoke could be seen billowing into the sky over the wrecked plant in video footage taken at the scene.
The explosion occurred roughly a week after secessionist leaders in Nagorno-Karabakh submitted to the Azerbaijani military following a day-long assault that Baku described as “counter-terrorism measures.” Azerbaijan will regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh under the conditions of the capitulation, nearly 30 years after the enclave gained a semblance of independence as a result of a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1994.
Following the truce, tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians left the area out of fear for ethnic cleansing under Baku’s rule. According to authorities in Yerevan, 28,120 of the 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, or about a quarter of the province’s population, had entered Armenia as of Tuesday night.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan to make sure that the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh is given protection under his administration. Despite having previously described Aremenians as “not even worthy of being servants,” Aliyev has pledged to do so and is viewed as a human rights violator by Western observers.
