Nagorno-Karabakh truce holds, but residents fear renewed violence

Elmira Bagiryan was leaving her village, at the epicentre of four days of fighting between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces, even though the gunfire had stopped.

“We are afraid that the shooting will begin again,” she said as she prepared to get into a car laden with carpets, pillows, blankets and furniture from her home.

The village of Talysh was briefly occupied by Azeri troops during four days of battles over Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region which subsided on Tuesday afternoon when both sides agreed a ceasefire.

Russia said it had played a lead role in brokering a halt to the violence, hosting a meeting between military chiefs from Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The fighting was the most intense since a war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s, and raised fears of a return to all-out conflict in a region that serves as a corridor for pipelines taking oil and gas to world markets.

The guns had fallen silent in Talysh, a few kilometres (miles) from the Azeri town of Barda on the northernmost edge of separatist-held territory, on Wednesday afternoon. Ethnic Armenian troops, firmly back in control, milled around, smiling.

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Image courtesy of AFP