Daily Sabah (Turkey)

Azerbaijan­i refugees to return to Karabakh in 2022

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AZERBAIJAN said yesterday it will begin in 2022 returning internally displaced people (IDP) to the Nagorno-Karabakh region and surroundin­g territorie­s that were recaptured last year from Armenian separatist­s.

Some 750,000 Azerbaijan­is were displaced after Baku lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts in a 1990s war with Armenian separatist­s that followed the Soviet Union’s breakup.

The largely dormant territoria­l conflict reerupted in September 2020, claiming the lives of some 6,000 people.

The fighting ended after six weeks with a Russian-brokered cease-fire that saw Yerevan cede swathes of territorie­s to Baku.

Yesterday, Azerbaijan­i President Ilham Aliyev said he was hoping that “the gradual return of the displaced to the liberated territorie­s will begin next year.”

He said work was currently underway to clear the area of land mines and repair infrastruc­ture destroyed in the fighting.

Addressing an internatio­nal conference on the South Caucasus held in Baku, Aliyev said a major obstacle for the refugees’ return was Armenia’s refusal to provide Baku with the map of Karabakh minefields.

He said more than 20 Azerbaijan­is, both military and civilians, were killed in Nagorno-Karabakh by land mine explosions after the cease-fire.

Flush with revenues from oil and gas in the Caspian Sea, Aliyev’s government has said it will spend billions of dollars on rebuilding the areas reclaimed in the war.

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