Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan’s State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons has announced that the work on clarifying the list of persons missing during the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is nearing the completion.

The Commission urged all those, who still have not applied for registration of their missing relatives, to provide the relevant working group with information about them in the shortest possible time.

The latest data provided by the Commission shows that a total of 3,868 people went missing during the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Majority of the missing persons – 3,123 people, are military personnel, while 745 people are civilians. Sixty two of the missing civilians are children, 262 are women and 302 are elderly people.

The bloody war, which flared up in the late 1980s due to Armenia's territorial claims against Azerbaijan led to occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions by Armenian armed forces. In a cruel war, more than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

Armenia repeatedly refused to submit information regarding the fate of thousands of Azerbaijanis, who gone missing or taken hostage.

Azerbaijan has many times declared its readiness to begin negotiations with Armenia to free the captives and resolve the long-standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, the Armenian side keeps ignoring all attempts of Azerbaijan and international organizations, thereby disrespecting the international law and hindering the settlement of the conflict.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

--