As Azerbaijan stages a victory parade in its capital Baku Thursday — attended by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — we look back at the six-week conflict with Armenia over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus, accuse each other of starting fighting that broke out on September 27.
It is the latest round in their decades-long dispute over the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ethnic Armenian separatists seized the region and areas around it from Azerbaijan in a bloody 1990s war that claimed 30,000 lives.
On September 30, France and Armenia says fighters from Syria and Libya are being used by oil-rich Azerbaijan.
Turkey — Baku’s staunch ally — denies it has sent them, but Armenia’s premier Nikol Pashinyan accuses Erdogan of fuelling the conflict.
By October 6 more half of the enclave’s 140,000 inhabitants are refugees, with its capital Stepanakert under heavy shelling.
Armenia responds with shelling and missile attacks on Azeri towns and cities in which some 93 civilians die.
After a third ceasefire collapses, Armenia pleads with Russia for help on October 31 as the Azeris retake swathes of the region.
Azerbaijan says it has captured Shusha on November 8, the region’s second biggest town, within striking distance of Stepanakert.
The next day — after the Azeris apologise for shooting down a Russian helicopter — Putin brokers a peace deal. Baku claims victory, saying Armenia has “capitulated”.
Under the deal, Armenia agrees to hand over three districts around Karabakh it captured in the 1990s — Aghdam, Lachin and Kalbajar. Its troops have retaken four others.
Fleeing Armenians burn their homes.
Angry Armenians storm government buildings in the capital Yerevan, accusing Pashinyan of betrayal.
Russia deploys peacekeepers who also guard a corridor from Armenia proper into the rump of the now cut-off breakaway region. Refugees begin returning home.
Baku says that 2,800 of its soldiers were killed in the fighting, with Armenia saying that it lost 2,317 troops. Some 93 Azeris and 50 Armenian civilians also lost their lives.
