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By Trend

Colleagues in Israel and around the world must put pressure on Armenia to force it to disclose landmine maps of Azerbaijan, Arye Gut, head of the Israeli office of the Baku International Multiculturalism Center, well-known expert in the field of international relations, told Trend.

"Yesterday I received the hard, shocking news on the death of my colleagues Siraj Abishov, an Azerbaijani television cameraman, and Maharram Ibrahimov, an AZERTAC employee, as a result of a mine explosion while on duty in the Kalbajar district," Gut said. "This terrible event can happen to any journalist who visits Azerbaijani lands liberated from the Armenian occupation."

"More than 120 Azerbaijani citizens were killed or injured as a result of the explosion on mines set by Armenia," the expert noted.

"Despite the clearance of more than 35,000 mines in the liberated territories of Azerbaijan on an area of ​​about 100 million square meters, the number of mine victims continues to grow," he further said. "By ignoring repeated calls to provide maps of mined territories, Armenia deliberately refuses to transmit this information."

"Exactly a month ago, I accompanied a journalist from the leading Israeli newspaper Israel HaYom in Azerbaijan’s liberated territories - Aghdam, Fuzuli, Zangilan and Jabrayil," Gut reminded. "Immediately after arriving to the territories, it seemed that a terrible plague was raging there. In the liberated areas, there are almost no surviving houses, kindergartens, schools, libraries and museums."

"Armenian occupiers destroyed such cities as Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil and Zangilan. Over all the years of the occupation, they were engaged in robbery and vandalism," he also noted. "When we visited these places, we were warned about a big number of mines there. Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil and Zangilan turned into ghost towns as a result of the Armenian occupation."

"The destruction scale in the liberated areas, mines planted everywhere, brutality, fascism and vandalism of Armenians are appalling. The consequences of Armenian vandalism and hatred are clearly visible in the liberated territories," he added.

"As an Israeli political expert, representative of the Baku International Center for Multiculturalism in Israel and executive director of the Azerbaijan House in Israel, I call on my colleagues around the world to immediately put pressure on Armenia, which is obliged to provide minefield maps," Gut stressed.

According to him, the mines laid by Armenia have been causing damage to Azerbaijan for 28 years, and the attempts of the Armenia to commit acts of sabotage in the Azerbaijani territory pose a serious threat to the lives of civilians.

Armenia's refusal to provide maps of minefields could endanger the lives of many people, including journalists, the expert said.

"But in today's format of international relations, unfortunately, the international community is silent, showing complete indifference to what is happening. How many innocent civilians of Azerbaijan must die for this attitude to change? What are these people to blame?" Gut said.

"Let’s recall that the deliberate massacre of civilians in the town of Khojaly 29 years ago was aimed at the mass destruction of civilians only because they were Azerbaijanis," he noted. "There is no explanation for this unprecedented cruelty and vandalism of Armenians against innocent children, women and old people, as well as the monstrous mining of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia."

"May Allah rest the souls of all our martyrs!" concluded Gut.

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