Armenian colonel says over 7,000 soldiers killed in Karabakh war
By Vafa Ismayilova
Colonel Aram Torgomyan has said that over 7,000 Armenian soldiers were killed in the last year's war with Azerbaijan, the Armenian media have reported.
The commander of the Aramo terrorist detachment and the head of the Armenian Army public organization, Torgomyan, made the remarks in an interview with the local media.
"When the war was stopped, there were Spayk cars with the bodies of our soldiers in different parts of Syunik. We have not 3,000, as [Armenian Prime Minister Nikol] Pashinyan assures, but over 7,000 victims," he said.
Some Armenian analysts believe that Armenia’s military losses in the recent war with Azerbaijan are much higher than the official figure presented by Yerevan. Earlier, the Caspian Defence Studies Institute estimated that Armenia’s losses in the war reached 6,000 servicemen, while the number of injured made up 8,000.
Azerbaijan’s losses in the 44-day war with Armenia are 2,906 soldiers, according to the information provided by the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry on June 30. In addition, eight Azerbaijani soldiers are still missing.
In late May, President Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan handed over the bodies of about 1,600 servicemen to Armenia despite the latter's failure to return the bodies of 4,000 Azerbaijani servicemen, who went missing during the first Karabakh war in the early 1990s.
Baku handed over the bodies to Yerevan in line with the trilateral peace agreement signed by Azerbaijan, Russia, and Armenia on November 10, 2020.
Armenia and Azerbaijan started the second war over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region on September 27. Six weeks of fighting ended with the signing of a Russia-brokered peace agreement on November 10.
The deal stipulates the exchange of prisoners as well as bodies of soldiers following the war. The peace agreement also stipulated the return of Armenian-occupied Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions to Azerbaijan’s control. Before the signing of the agreement, Azerbaijan had liberated around 300 city centres, settlements and villages, including historic Shusha city.
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