Azerbaijan’s state border guard service said on Tuesday that it made the decision because Karabakh residents returning home from Armenia repeatedly tried last week to “smuggle” cigarettes, mobile phone screens, gasoline and other items. The ICRC failed to stop such “illegal actions,” it said, adding that the Azerbaijani checkpoint controversially set up in the Lachin corridor in April will remain completely closed until the end of its inquiry into the alleged smuggling attempts.
The ICRC has transported hundreds of Karabakh patients to Armenian hospitals since Baku blocked last December commercial traffic through Karabakh’s sole land link with Armenia. Only Red Cross vehicles as well as convoys of Russian peacekeepers were able to pass through the road.
The ICRC said later on Tuesday that four of its hired drivers “tried to transport some commercial goods in their own vehicles which were temporarily displaying the ICRC emblem.”
“These individuals were not ICRC staff members and their service contracts were immediately terminated by the ICRC,” it added in a statement.
"Our work along the Lachin corridor is always strictly humanitarian. This essential work, which has allowed more than 600 patients to be evacuated for medical care and for medical supplies, food, baby formula and other essentials to reach health care facilities and families, must be allowed to continue.”
Baku already blocked the medical evacuations in late April and on June 15. They most recently resumed on June 25.
Karabakh’s leadership did not immediately react to the latest Azerbaijani ban. The Armenian Foreign Ministry expressed concern about it, saying that “more international efforts and actions are needed to lift the 7-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
“It is obvious that Azerbaijan is simply looking for excuses to finally close the only way through which medicines and other medical supplies were brought to Karabakh,” Artur Harutiunian, a senior Karabakh lawmaker, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Harutiunian argued that family members accompanying Karabakh patients on their way back from Armenia did not try to smuggle weapons or drugs. He said they only carried things that are running out in Karabakh due to the Azerbaijani blockade.
Baku further tightened the blockade on June 15, banning the Russian peacekeepers from shipping limited amounts of food to Karabakh. It has also been blocking Armenia’s electricity and gas supplies to the Armenian-populated region.