Azerbaijan demolishes parliament building of Karabakh Armenians
Azerbaijan has started demolishing a building that housed for almost two decades the parliament run by ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Footage broadcast by Azerbaijani state television on Monday showed mechanical diggers flattening the building in Stepanakert, an abandoned city known by Azerbaijanis as Khankendi which once served as the capital city of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh.
The short televised video showed giant metal claws razing the masonry of the gutted edifice of the mostly ruined marble structure that was shaped like a traditional Armenian church.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been at the center of a dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia for more than three decades. Since gaining independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, the two neighboring countries have fought two wars, in 1994 and 2020, over the mountainous territory.
Karabakh, while acknowledged as a part of Azerbaijan by the international community, once had a predominantly Armenian population that was opposed to Azerbaijani governance.
However, Azerbaijan took full control of the Karabakh in September last year, after its troops recaptured the region in a 24-hour military operation, prompting an exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians into neighboring Armenia.
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