A convoy of cars carrying them reportedly had to return to the Armenian town of Goris on Tuesday night after spending five hours at the blocked section of the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia.
Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman and eyewitnesses said some Azerbaijanis broke into one of those vehicles and intimidated their mostly female passengers. Three Karabakh Armenian women felt and unwell and passed out as a result, according to them.
Karine Aghajanian, another passenger, confirmed reports that an Azerbaijani ambulance transported them to a hospital in Stepanakert.
“The Russians wanted to transport them in their vehicles but the Azerbaijanis didn’t allowed them to do that … That is why we agreed to let them do that,” Aghajanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Wednesday.
“It’s not that they provided medical aid, the incident happened because of them,” she said, speaking from Goris.
Harutiunian also accused the Azerbaijanis of trying to provoke Karabakh Armenian men travelling in the convoy. “Thank God, our men … restrained themselves for the sake of the women,” she said.
The Azerbaijani government widely publicized the transfer of the three women to the Stepanakert hospital. But it didn’t comment on the other Karabakh residents’ failure to return home almost four months after the start of the Azerbaijani blockade.
Karabakh’s leadership strongly condemned the Azerbaijani protesters for “terrorizing” the civilians during the five-hour standoff. It renewed its calls for the international community to help end the “illegal blockade” that has left hundreds of Karabakh residents stranded in Armenia and led to serious shortages of food, medicine and other essential items in the Armenian-populated region.
The United States, the European Union and Russia have repeatedly urged Azerbaijan to unblock traffic through the Lachin corridor in line with the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war. Baku has rejected those appeals, saying that the “environmental” protesters are right to demand an end to “illegal” mining in Karabakh.
The Azerbaijani side has allowed only convoys of the Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to periodically pass through the road. The ICRC has evacuated dozens of critically ill patients from Karabakh to Armenia.