Their families believe that they were most probably at the site of the explosion that destroyed the gasoline storage facility on September 25, 2023, killing at least 219 people and injuring nearly 300 others. Videos posted on social media showed hundreds of cars parked near it, waiting to fuel up and head to Armenia. Fuel had been in extremely short supply in Karabakh since Azerbaijan blocked traffic through the Lachin corridor in December 2022.
The chaotic scenes followed Azerbaijan’s September 19 assault that forced Karabakh’s leadership to disband its armed forces after brief but fierce fighting that left at least 198 Karabakh soldiers and 25 civilian residents dead. More than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians, the region’s virtually entire remaining population, fled to Armenia in the following days.
Some relatives of the missing people still hope that they are alive, citing rumors that some of the injured Karabakh Armenians were taken to Azerbaijani hospitals and are held in Azerbaijan. They periodically appeal to Gegham Stepanian, Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, to find out the whereabouts of their loved ones.
This grab taken from video distributed by Siranush Sargsyan's Twitter account on Monday, Sept. 25, 2023, shows smoke rising after a fuel depot explosion near Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh.
“On this issue, there have been several attempts to reach an agreement with Azerbaijan to carry out new search operations at the site of the explosion,” said Stepanian. “Certain agreements seemed to have been reached, but every time Azerbaijan did not honor them at the last moment.”
Families of the missing Karabakh Armenians as well as those killed by the blast are also demanding more information about its causes and massive death toll.
“It's your fault that so many parents are grieving for their children today,” Arega Voskanian, whose 41-year-old son Aslan is among those unaccounted for, said, appealing to Karabakh’s exiled leadership in Armenia.
Samvel Shahramanian, the Karabakh president, said in October 2023 that the explosion was caused by a violation of safety rules. He said the underground depot, which reportedly contained 400,000 liters of gasoline reserved for Karabakh’s army, was besieged by scores of people desperate to leave their homeland. Voskanian countered that the authorities could and should have organized an orderly distribution of the fuel even in those extreme circumstances.
Armenia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case shortly after the blast. It has not charged anyone so far.