By Syuzanna Petrosyan
Hasmik Khachatryan, CivilNet’s videographer in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), has been in a bomb shelter for the last 24 hours in the region’s capital Stepanakert.
Reporter Hayk Ghazaryan is with his family in Stepanakert. He sent this report earlier today.
Before the bombing began, reporter Siranush Adamyan had decided to visit her parents in a village in the Martuni Region. In the past 24 hours, CivilNet has not been able to establish contact with her or anyone in her family.
CivilNet’s newsroom in Stepanakert, which opened its doors a few months before the 2020 Karabakh War, is staffed by Hasmik, Hayk and Siranush. Average age 22. It is the only operational outside news agency in Karabakh, reporting from the ground in Armenian, English, and Russian.
Azerbaijan began shelling cities and villages Tuesday afternoon, declaring that it won’t stop until the region’s full surrender to Baku.
“People in the shelter were starving, they could not go out to find whatever food was left,” Hasmik, who is originally from Karabakh’s Vaghahas Village said.
Under the bombs, women and children who have been subjected to famine for the last nine months, took to shelters. While international experts call the ongoing situation a genocide, Azerbaijan justifies its violence by calling the region’s indigenous population terrorists.
Baku’s latest round of massive sustained violence towards a region and a people it claims to be its own has left at least 200 dead and more than 400 injured, including women and children.
“With wifi and phone lines down, it’s been difficult to reach relatives in different areas and get information about their situation,” Hasmik said.
Hasmik and her sister were separated into different shelters during the bombing; they have since found each other. Their parents have been forced to leave Vaghahas Village and are currently stationed in an unknown location with Russian peacekeepers.
They are part of more than 7,000 civilians who have been forced to flee their villages in Karabakh; they are now in limbo and dispersed throughout different locations in Karabakh.
Today, Karabakh authorities surrendered and announced the dissolution of the Defense Army, which had been protecting the region for three decades.
The people’s fate remains uncertain, the bombs are still going off, and Baku’s offers of rights and securities for the Armenians of Karabakh become more and more elusive.
