Their old abandoned houses… and on fire.

Residents of some villages in Nagorno-Karabakh set fire to their homes on Saturday, November 14, before fleeing to Armenia, while Azerbaijan is due to regain control of the region on Sunday after weeks of open conflict, and the signing of 'a cease-fire contested by part of the Armenian population.

"This is the last day, tomorrow the Azerbaijani soldiers will be there," said a soldier in the village of Charektar, in the Kalbajar region which is to be surrendered to Baku.

In this village alone, marking the limit with the neighboring district of Martakert, which must remain under Armenian control, at least six houses were on fire on Saturday morning, according to an AFP journalist.

Flames billowed from the windows, setting the frames ablaze in thick plumes of gray smoke rising into the valley sky.

"Everyone is going to burn their house down"

"This is my house, I cannot leave it to the Turks," said the owner of one of the houses, referring to the Azerbaijani.

With his face closed, he threw firewood planks and embers soaked in gasoline to try to set fire to the floor of his old living room, in a completely empty house.

"We were waiting to be fixed. But when they started to dismantle the hydroelectric station, we understood," he adds.

"Everyone is going to burn down their house today (...) We have been given until midnight to leave".

"We also moved the parents' grave, the Azerbaijanis will take pleasure in desecrating our graves, it's unbearable," he spits with an air of disgust, before getting back into his car and throwing them insults against Azerbaijanis.

Friday, November 13, at least a dozen homes were set on fire in the same village and its surroundings.

Destruction of the Armenian cemetery of Djulfa

The people of Nagorno-Karabakh fear that history will repeat itself, with the memory in mind of the destruction of the Djulfa cemetery in the Azeri region of Nakhichevan, destroyed by forces loyal to Baku between 2002 and 2006.

The peace agreement signed between Yerevan and Baku under the aegis of Moscow ended nearly seven weeks of intense fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave disputed for decades between these two Caucasian countries.

At the end of this text, Azerbaijan reconquered large territories which had been under Armenian control since the beginning of the 1990s.

With AFP

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