As part of a deal that ended weeks of fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, Kalbajar district, was among the second of the three to be handed back by Armenia. Azerbaijan, on Wednesday said that its forces had entered Kalbajar district.
Kalbajar was initially scheduled for handover on November 15, but the deadline was postponed by Azerbaijan for humanitarian reasons. The defence ministry in Baku said in a statement that “units of the Azerbaijani army entered the Kalbajar region on November 25” under the deal signed earlier this month by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia.
Armenia agreed to hand over three districts around Karabakh — Aghdam, Kalbajar and Lachin — as part of the deal that stopped an Azerbaijani offensive that had reclaimed swathes of territory lost to Armenian separatists in a 1990s war.
Aghdam was ceded on November 20 and Lachin is to be handed over by first week of December. Under the agreement Armenia is losing control of seven regions seized during the post-Soviet war in the 1990s, which killed 30,000 people and displaced many Azerbaijanis that used to live in Karabakh.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have traded accusations of war crimes in fierce fighting that erupted in Karabakh in late September, reigniting their simmering conflict for the control of the Armenian – populated region of Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general on Wednesday, said that officials in Baku, the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, are investigating alleged war crimes committed by Armenian and Azerbaijani forces during six weeks of fighting over the disputed Nagorno – Karabakh region and has also told AFP news agency that his office is studying the footage, as a part of an investigation into the inhumane treatment of Azerbaijani prisoners and the defilement of bodies of Azerbaijani troops.
Videos circulated on social media during the fighting that allegedly showed executions of Armenian prisoners of war by Azerbaijani troops and Armenian soldiers defiling the bodies of Azerbaijani servicemen.
“There are many fake videos. But we must say frankly that there also are videos which could be authentic,” he said. “Azerbaijan is a law-based state and we are reacting to such facts.”
He said Azerbaijan had also initiated 73 criminal cases of Armenian forces shelling civilian targets in Azerbaijan.
The attacks have claimed the lives of 94 civilians, including small children, women and elderly people, along with four ethnic Armenian leaders – including the President of the unrecognized Nagorno – Karabakh Republic, Arayik Harutyunyan – who were also charged with war crimes in absentia.