Amid months of tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh, the humanitarian aid restarted following an agreement between Armenian separatists and the Baku government, according to Azerbaijan and the Red Cross.
Months-long tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh eased a notch on Monday as aid supplies resumed following an agreement between Armenian separatists and the Baku government, Azerbaijan and the Red Cross said.
Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of fuelling a humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh after Baku last year blocked the sole road linking the mountainous region with Armenia, the Lachin corridor policed by Russian peacekeepers.
The closure has led to food and medicine shortages in the region, with Yerevan accusing Baku of pursuing the “policy of ethnic cleansing.”
Azerbaijan has rejected the accusation, arguing Nagorno-Karabakh could receive all the supplies it needed via Azerbaijan.
Baku has said that the separatist authorities had simply refused its proposal to simultaneously reopen the Lachin corridor and the Aghdam road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with the rest of Azerbaijan.
The months-long crisis and Baku’s deployment of troops near Nagorno-Karabakh and along the border with Armenia have sparked fears of a fresh all-out conflict between the arch-foes locked in a decades-long dispute over the region.
On Monday, the “Simultaneous passage of the Red Cross cars was ensured” through the Lachin corridor and the Aghdam road, Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy advisor to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, said on social media.
International Committee of the Red Cross said that thanks to “a humanitarian consensus between the decision-makers, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is today bringing shipments of wheat flour and essential medical items to people in need via the Lachin Corridor and the Aghdam road.”
The European Union and United States have called for reopening the Lachin and Aghdam routes for humanitarian aid.
Miroslava Salazar, with AFP
