A convoy of 19 Armenian trucks carrying emergency food aid to Nagorno-Karabakh was stopped on July 26 near Kornidzor at the approaches to an Azerbaijani checkpoint at the entrance to the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh. It now awaits approval to access the region that has seen severe shortages of basic foodstuffs and other essentials due to Azerbaijan’s effective blockade.
The United States, the European Union, Russia and other international actors have urged Azerbaijan to allow humanitarian supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh via the Lachin corridor. Azerbaijan says, however, that it can only allow supplies to Karabakh Armenians via a road from Agdam, an Azeri-controlled town in the east of the region. Ethnic Armenian authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh reject this offer, considering Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin corridor as a violation of the Moscow-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement that placed the five-kilometer-wide strip of land connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia solely under the control of Russian peacekeepers.
Syunik Governor Robert Ghukasian today accompanied the visiting U.S. officials, who did not wish to talk to media.
It is not yet known how long the Armenian truck convoy carrying some 400 tons of humanitarian cargo will remain in Kornidzor.
Earlier, official Baku described the sending of an aid convoy to Nagorno-Karabakh by the Armenian government without its consent as a “provocation” and “encroachment” on its territorial integrity.
So far the stranded Armenian aid convoy in Kornidzor has been visited by representatives of diplomatic corps and ambassadors accredited to Armenia, representatives of the United Nations office, as well as representatives of international NGOs.
A group of UN experts issued a statement on August 7, expressing alarm over the ongoing blockade of the Lachin corridor by Azerbaijan, which they said had led to a dire humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh. They urged Azerbaijan to lift the blockade.
“By lifting the blockade, the authorities can alleviate the suffering of thousands of people in Nagorno-Karabakh and allow for the unimpeded flow of humanitarian assistance to the civilian population. It is essential to ensure the safety, dignity, and well-being of all individuals during this critical time,” the experts said, also calling on Russian peacekeeping forces deployed in the region to protect the corridor under the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the UN experts for what it described as their biased statement that it claimed had been influenced by “Armenia’s manipulations.”
Meanwhile, health authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh reported a spike in the death rate and disease incidence related to lack of medicines and malnutrition.
The region’s de facto Health Ministry said that in conditions of shortages brought on by the blockade of the Lachin corridor during the last eight months in the period from January to July the number of deaths from diseases of the circulatory system has increased more than twice among the total deaths, while the number of deaths from malignant neoplasms has increased by nearly 16 percent in seven months compared to the same period in 2022. According to the report, the level of anemia among pregnant women under the supervision of doctors has reached about 90 percent.