According to the Armenian government, almost all refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh have left

Since Azerbaijan invaded and forced the militants in the breakaway area to disarm, an ethnic Armenian exodus has almost completely emptied Nagorno-Karabakh of its inhabitants, the Armenian government said on Saturday.

Approximately 100,000 individuals have come in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, which had a population of about 120,000 until Azerbaijan recaptured the province last week in a lightning attack, according to Nazeli Baghdasaryan, the press secretary for Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Since last week, 21,043 cars have traveled through the Hakari Bridge, which connects Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Some others waited in line for days since Armenia can only be reached by this narrow mountain road.

More than 80% of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population has left, raising concerns about Azerbaijan’s intentions for the region that the international community recognized as a part of its sovereignty.

After a three-decade attempt at independence, the region’s separatist ethnic Armenian administration announced on Thursday that it will dissolve itself by the end of the year.

According to Pashinyan, the ethnic Armenian migration amounted to “a direct act of an ethnic cleansing and depriving people of their motherland”.

The region’s people’ mass exodus, according to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, was “their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation,” it was said.

People on both sides of the three-decade-long war in the area have become highly skeptical and terrified as a result of accusations of targeted assaults, murders, and other crimes made by Azerbaijan and the rebels supported by Armenia.

Even though Azerbaijan has promised to uphold the rights of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, the majority of them are leaving because they don’t believe the government would treat them humanely or ensure their ability to practice their religion, language, or culture.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1994, six years of separatist struggle came to an end, and ethnic Armenian troops with the support of Armenia took control of Nagorno-Karabakh. After that, Azerbaijan recaptured portions of the south Caucasus Mountains after a six-week conflict in 2020, along with neighboring land that Armenian troops had before seized.

The single route that connects Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia was sealed in December by Azerbaijan, which claimed that the Armenian government was using it to smuggle weapons to the separatist troops in the area.

Less than 24 hours after Azerbaijan’s onslaught started, ethnic Armenian troops in the area opted to disarm due to the blockade’s weakening effects and the distance taken by Armenia’s leadership from the fight. Officials from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and the separatist leadership in Nagorno-Karabakh have started talking about “reintegrating” the province into Azerbaijan.