\n Azerbaijani soldiers and military trucks rolled into the district of Kalbajar on Wednesday, reclaiming the second of three regions Armenia is handing back under a deal that ended weeks of fighting.\n<\/p>\n
\n Images released by Azerbaijan's defence ministry showed troops deploying into the district overnight, some scanning for landmines on snow-covered roads.\n<\/p>\n
\n The district is among those being handed back by Armenia after it agreed to a peace deal ending six weeks of clashes over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kalbajar, wedged between Karabakh and the territory of Armenia, was initially scheduled for handover on November 15 but Azerbaijan pushed back the deadline for humanitarian reasons.\n<\/p>\n
\n Armenia agreed to hand back 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n Aghdam was ceded on November 20 and Lachin is to be handed over by December 1.\n<\/p>\n
\n Near the village of Cherektar on the edges of Kalbajar, Armenian soldiers were setting up a checkpoint with stacks of tyres blocking the road.\n<\/p>\n
\n Holding a Kalashnikov rifle and with a white cross drawn on the front of his camouflage uniform, 20-year-old soldier Armen Shakhnazaryan said it was a shame for Armenia to lose the district.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We have a lot of churches here,\" Shakhnazaryan told AFP. \"Our ancestors, our elders and our friends are buried here.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - Kalbajar 'liberated' -\n<\/p>\n
\n In a televised address on Wednesday, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev congratulated his people, saying Kalbajar had been \"liberated\".\n<\/p>\n
\n He said historic monuments in the district including churches and mosques were considered \"historical treasures\" by mainly Muslim Azerbaijan and would be preserved.\n<\/p>\n
\n Azerbaijanis who fled the region nearly 30 years ago are expected to return as Armenians left en masse.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the days before the handover, Kalbajar residents packed all they could take, determined to leave nothing for their longtime foes.\n<\/p>\n
\n Locals collected electric cables, loaded parts of a hydroelectric power station into a truck and even cut down trees to take with them as they left.\n<\/p>\n
\n But 22-year-old Gevorg Vanyan -- who works at a gas station in the village of Getavan in a district bordering Kalbajar -- said he will not leave even if it was \"very dangerous\" to stay.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Never in my life could I imagine that life could change like this... But we have lived here and will live here,\" Vanyan told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n Clashes between the ex-Soviet rivals over Nagorno-Karabakh broke out in late September, reigniting a long-simmering conflict over the mountainous region.\n<\/p>\n
\n The ethnic Armenian enclave broke away from Azerbaijani control in the 1990s war and declared independence, though this was never internationally recognised.\n<\/p>\n
\n The peace deal was reached after Azerbaijan's military overwhelmed Armenian separatist forces and threatened to advance on Karabakh's main city Stepanakert.\n<\/p>\n
\n Under the agreement, Armenia is losing control of seven districts seized during the post-Soviet war in the 1990s, which killed 30,000 people and displaced many Azerbaijanis that used to live there.\n<\/p>\n
\n The separatists are retaining control over most of Karabakh's Soviet-era territory and some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers have deployed along frontline areas and to protect the Lachin corridor, which connects Karabakh with Armenia.\n<\/p>\n
\n Other Armenians have meanwhile been returning to Karabakh itself.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russia said on Wednesday it had helped more than 15,000 people to return from Armenia after they had fled the fighting, which left thousands dead including more than 100 civilians.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Azerbaijan probing war crimes -\n<\/p>\n
\n Moscow's role in halting the fighting has stolen the spotlight from France and the United States, who together with Russia form the so-called Minsk Group of negotiators that brokered an unstable ceasefire in the 1990s.\n<\/p>\n
\n The three countries attempted three separate ceasefires during the recent fighting, all of which collapsed as Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of violations.\n<\/p>\n
\n Azerbaijan's prosecutor general meanwhile said Wednesday the country was investigating allegations of war crimes against both sides.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"There are many fake videos. But we must say frankly that there also are videos which could be authentic,\" Kamran Aliyev told AFP in an interview. \"Azerbaijan is a law-based state and we are reacting to such facts.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Azerbaijani soldiers and military trucks rolled into the district of Kalbajar on Wednesday, reclaiming the second of three regions Armenia is handing back under a deal that ended weeks of fighting. Images released by Azerbaijan's defence ministry showed troops deploying into the district overnight, some scanning for landmines on snow-covered roads. The district is among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-46083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n