Azerbaijan said Saturday that it released 15 Armenian prisoners of war in exchange for a map showing the locations of mines in the Agdam region, from which Armenian forces withdrew as part of an agreement to end a six-week war from September 27 to November 9 last year.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stated - in a statement - that Armenia provided Azerbaijan with a map of the spread of 97 thousand anti-personnel and anti-armored mines in the city of Agdam, and indicated that the return of the Armenians took place on the Azeri-Georgian border.
For his part, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken welcomed the agreement, and said he hoped it would lay the foundation for further cooperation, adding in a statement, "We continue to call for the return of all detainees, and we stand ready to assist countries in the region in their efforts to continue cooperation and resolve outstanding issues between them."
A Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement halted a war that saw the Azerbaijani army expel Armenian forces from large swathes of territory it had controlled since the 1990s in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.