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ICRC: Dead bodies of soldiers collected from battlefield

27 February 2017 15:22 (UTC +04:00)

The bodies of soldiers killed in action during the incident, which occurred along the line of contact, have been collected from the battlefield, the ICRC Delegation in Azerbaijan told APA.

The ICRC said the operation was conducted on Monday, February 27 upon the request of the sides and based on an agreement between them.

The retrieval operation was coordinated between the ICRC and the Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group and the Personal Representative of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) Chairman-in-Office.

Azerbaijani servicemen Agshin Abdullayev, Shakhlar Nazarov, Tural Hashimli, Zulfi Gadimov and Zakir Jafarov were killed while preventing provocations of the Armenian army along the contact line of troops on Feb. 24-25. They bodies remained on the battlefield.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in Dec.1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.