President Aliyev, First Lady commemorate martyrs of Karabakh war [PHOTO/VIDEO]

4 December 2020 12:09 (UTC+04:00)

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President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva visited the Alley of Martyrs on October 4 to commemorate Azerbaijani soldiers who lost their lives in the 2020 Kararabakh War.

The memory of martyrs was also honored with a minute of silence across the nation at 12:00 on the same day.

2,783 Azerbaijani servicemen lost their lives in the 44-day-war. Of them, 103 servicemen haven't been identified yet. More than a hundred servicemen are considered missing, while 1,245 are being treated in hospitals.

The clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan resumed after Armenia launched large-scale attacks on Azerbaijani forces and civilians on September 27. Five Azerbaijani civilians were killed in the first day of the Armenian attacks. Over 90 Azerbaijani civilians were killed in Armenian's indiscriminate attacks on Azerbaijani civilians. Azerbaijan launched counter-offensive operations that ended in the liberation of over 300 settlements, villages. Azerbaijan also liberated five city centres and the historic Shusha city that was liberated on November 8.

The 44 days of war ended with the Russian brokered peace deal signed on November 10 by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders. Under the peace agreement Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions were vacated by the Armenians by December 1. The agreement also envisages the return of Azerbaijani IDPs to Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven adjacent regions under the control of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The peace agreement ended the 30-years-old conflict between Baku and Yerevan over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region that along with the seven adjacent districts came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the early 1990s. For about three decades, Armenia failed to implement the UN Security Council resolutions demanding the withdrawal of the Armenian troops, which was the main obstacle to the resolution of the conflict.