[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
Half Karabakh Population Displaced as Mediators Set for Geneva Talks
[AnNahar] Clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have displaced half of the population of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, an official said on Wednesday, as Azerbaijan announced it would meet international mediators in Geneva.
Intermittent shelling by Azerbaijan's forces has turned Stepanakert into a ghost town dotted with unwent kaboom! munitions and shell craters.
Much of Stepanakert's 50,000-strong population has left, with those remaining hunkering down in cellars.
"According to our preliminary estimates, some 50 percent of Karabakh's population and 90 percent of women and kiddies -- or some 70,000-75,000 people -- have been displaced," Karabakh's rights ombudsman Artak Beglaryan told AFP Wednesday.
Azerbaijan has accused Armenian forces of shelling civilian targets in urban areas, including its second-largest city of Ganja.
Dozens of civilians have been confirmed killed in the fighting and the Armenian side has acknowledged more than 300 military deaths. Azerbaijan has not admitted to any fatalities among its troops.
Azerbaijani prosecutors said 427 dwellings populated by roughly 1,200 people had been destroyed.
But Le Drian, speaking to the French parliament, accused Azerbaijan of initiating the current conflict and lamented "the large number of civilian victims for the sake of meagre progress" on the ground.
Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan in a 1990s war that claimed the lives of some 30,000 people. The Armenian separatists declared independence.
The region's 140,000 inhabitants are now almost exclusively Armenians after the remaining Azerbaijanis left in the 1990s war.
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