Azerbaijan vows to ensure safety of civilians travelling from Karabakh

Azerbaijan will ensure the safety of civilians seeking to travel in their own vehicles through the road which leads from Karabakh to Armenia, a top Azerbaijani official has said.

Many Armenian residents are seeking to leave Karabakh after a lightning military strike by Azerbaijan forced Armenian separatists to agree to a ceasefire and lay down arms to Baku’s troops.

“On the basis of voluntary and individual choice, we ensure the safety of the movement of civilians with their own vehicles along the Khankendi-Lachin road,” Hikmet Hajiyev, the foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijan's president, wrote on the X platform on Friday.

“Military personnel who voluntarily lay down their weapons are free, as we (have) openly stated.”

In his lengthy post, Hajiyev said Azerbaijan is ready to provide medical assistance to “wounded servicemen of Armenian origin or help them” through the International Red Cross.

"Civilians were not harmed”

While Baku is providing medical vehicles to the ICRC for helping wounded military personnel, he said Azerbaijan will also allow vehicles from Armenia into Karabakh to evacuate the injured.

“Work is underway with Russian peacekeepers to collect the bodies of combatants left on the field,” he added.

Hajiyev said that the ICRC has “commended” Azerbaijan’s strict observance of international humanitarian law, which helped avoid “collateral damage during the local anti-terrorist measures, which lasted 23 hours and 51 minutes”.

“As the Prime Minister of Armenia himself admitted, civilians were not harmed,” he said while criticising what he described as “unverified and unserious statements” by the EU, French, and German officials.

Within the concept of civil-military cooperation, Azerbaijani military and civilian personnel on the ground are helping civilians and will continue to do so, he added.