Azernews.Az

By Aisha Jabbarova

Chair of Azerbaijan’s Parliament Sahiba Gavarova has said that Armenia is violating the international law by refusing to provide maps of mines planted in Azerbaijan’s formerly-occupied territories.

Addressing an international conference ‘Global Challenges and Threats in the COVID-19 Pandemic Environment; Terrorism and Violent Extremism’ held in St Petersburg, Russia, Gafarova said that Armenian mines have killed military servicemen and civilians after the end of the war.

“Those are the post-war causalities that could have been avoided had Armenia issued the minefield maps – and Armenia had to do so by the international law. Azerbaijan has approached the international organisations on the subject, according to Mrs Gafarova who remarked that those organisations should put influence on Armenia,” Gafarova said.

Some 20 Azerbaijani citizens, including 14 civilians were killed and 87 citizens, including 16 civilians were injured in mine explosions since the signing of the Karabakh peace deal by the Azerbaijani, Armenian and Russian leaders on November 10, 2020.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on February 26 described Armenia’s failure to provide the maps of mined areas in liberated lands as the main difficulty for Azerbaijani IPDs to return to their homes. He said that this can also be considered to be a war crime as several servicemen and civilians were killed in mine blasts on liberated territories after the war.

Gafarova reminded that Armenia staged a provocation against Azerbaijan on September 27 in an attempt to capture new territories, subjecting Azerbaijani towns, villages and military positions to artillery fire and ballistic missiles and causing casualties among civilians and military personnel. She said that terrorists of Armenian background coming from the very different parts of the Planet including Syria, Lebanon and even European countries were flocking to Armenia then and were moved by Armenia to the conflict zone subsequently.

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