“Yesterday We Struggled to Find Bread, Today We Are Struggling to Live”

Hundreds of people have been killed or injured and thousands displaced following Azerbaijan's military action.

People on makeshift beds in a shelter in Stepanakert, Karabakh’s regional centre. “This is one of the city’s main shelters, it is considered to a safe place but safety is a relative concept… Many children from various areas of the city came here,” said IWPR contributor Siranush Sargsyan. © Siranush Sargsyan

Evacuees from Nor Verin Horata, a village in Martakert region, head to the Russian military base in the hope of finding shelter and food. The group fled on September 19 when the village came under shelling with some clothes but no food and no money. For the past nine months, Azerbaijan has imposed an effective blockade on the only route into the enclave from Armenia, known as the Lachin corridor. © Siranush Sargsyan

Evacuees arrive in Stepanakert on September 19 as Azerbaijan’s army shelled villages as part of the military offensive to regain control of the region. © Siranush Sargsyan

Aram, 13, lives in Stepanakert. When the shooting started he was at school and as children panicked, the teachers took them to the basement. “When I asked him what worried him the most he said he was worried about his grandmother, mother and sister but mostly about his father because when he heard the first shoot he knew that his father would volunteer to go and fight,” said IWPR contributor Siranush Sargsyan. © Siranush Sargsyan

A block of apartments was destroyed in Stepanakert’s district of Mkhitar Gosh. “[Baku] said they targeted military objects, but only civilians live in this neighbourhood,” said IWPR contributor Siranush Sargsyan. © Siranush Sargsyan

Children in a basement on September 19. “People amassed in several basements and shelters, it was really hard because there were not only worried but also hungry. For several months during the blockade electricity was rationed, there was no gas supply. Now, people do not know what to expect next,” said IWPR contributor Siranush Sargsyan. © Siranush Sargsyan

A six-year-old in Stepanakert’s Children’s Hospital. The boy was rushed to the hospital from the village of Sarnaghbyur, in Karabakh’s Askeran region, on September 19 after he was injured in the shelling, alongside two of his siblings. In total six children were injured in the village and one woman was killed. © Siranush Sargsyan

A destroyed shop in Stepanakert. As the blockade of the region drew into its nine months, shelves in shops and market were empty as no goods have been allowed into the region since mid-June. © Siranush Sargsyan

A destroyed vehicle on Azatamartikneri Avenue in Stepanakert. The ground floor of the residential buildings near it was destroyed as were the empty shops in the proximity. © Siranush Sargsyan

“Residential areas were targeted from the first shot, not just military [objectives] and not only in Stepanakert but also villagers,” Siranush Sargsyan, IWPR’s correspondent in Nagorny Karabakh, said in a voice message recorded from the basement where she was sheltering from the Azerbaijani military offensive launched on September 19. “After nine months of blockade, people are prostrated…. Yesterday [September 18] we were struggling to find bread, a single piece of bread…today we are struggling just to live, to survive…”

The 24-hour offensive left 200 people dead, including five children, and 400 wounded, according to the de facto authorities, with tens of thousands displaced.

Baku’s condition for the ceasefire, brokered by Russian peacekeepers, was for Stepanakert to fully disband and disarm its armed forces and remove all heavy equipment and weaponry from the territory.

Sargsyan, who lives in Stepanakert, known as Khankendi by Azerbaijan, has been documenting the hurdles that the civilian population in the region faces in the wake of the renewed violence.

Maro, 86, arrived in Stepanakert in the evening of September 19 from Zagli, a village in the Nagorny Karabakh region. As the bombardment started the village head evacuated her to the city. “I have lived through many wars, many hurdles, but this time it was the hardest,” she said. “I witnessed the despair of my children and grandchildren. Why are they attacking us, pushing us from our houses after nine months of blockade that starved us? I want to return to my village but there should be security and guarantees that people can live peacefully and with dignity.” © Siranush Sargsyan

“People flocked to Stepanakert from villages, they arrived with their document and a few clothes, they have nothing else,” she said via an unstable phone and internet connection.

“The agreement is reached but, imagine, people are in panic,” she continued. “Is this what they mean for peace? For reintegration? In Stepanakert there are a lot of people trying to find their relatives They really do not know where they family members are, in all the districts. During the 2020 war we somehow managed to call every district and know what was going on, but [this time] we didn’t have that opportunity…”

Azerbaijan’s authorities reportedly captured more than 90 positions during the fighting. Among them is the Amaras monastery, one of the region’s oldest and holiest churches where the inventor of the Armenian alphabet, Mesrop Mashtots, is said to have opened the first school in the 5th century.

“They had just agreed to open the Lachin and Aghdam corridor [on September 17] and send us so-called ‘aid’, then the next day they bombarded us. For months we tried to explain why we could [not] receive aid from Azerbaijan, it is because we do not trust them, we knew we could not [trust them].

Home to some 120,000 ethnic Armenians, the disputed mountainous enclave is inside the internationally recognised border of Azerbaijan and it has been under Armenia’s control since the mid-1990s after the two countries fought over the region after the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2020 Azerbaijan recaptured areas in and around the region before a truce was agreed and monitored by Russian peacekeepers.

This publication was prepared under the "Amplify, Verify, Engage (AVE) Project" implemented with the financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway.

Project Focus Amplify, Verify, Engage

Locations Nagorny Karabakh

Topics Conflict