GORIS: Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh need security guarantees before giving up their weapons, an adviser to their leader said on Thursday, a day after Azerbaijan declared it had brought the breakaway region back under its control.
Karabakh Armenian authorities accused Azerbaijan of violating a cease-fire agreed on Wednesday after a lightning Azerbaijani offensive forced the separatists to agree to disarm.
Baku’s defense ministry said the allegation that its forces had broken the cease-fire was “completely false.” Two sources in Karabakh’s main city told Reuters they had heard heavy gunfire on Thursday morning, but it was not clear who was firing.
The shooting and the conflicting narratives highlighted the potential for further bloodshed despite a deal agreed 24 hours earlier that Azerbaijan said had restored its sovereignty over Karabakh after 35 years of conflict.
“We have an agreement on the cessation of military action but we await a final agreement — talks are going on,” David Babayan, an adviser to Nagorno-Karabakh’s breakaway ethnic Armenian leader Samvel Shahramanyan, told Reuters. “We need to talk through a lot of many questions and issues.”
“There has not been a final agreement yet.”
When asked about giving up weapons, Babayan said his people could not be left to die, so would security guarantees first.
“A whole host of questions still need to be resolved,” he said.
Talks took place on Thursday in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh between Azerbaijan and representatives of the Republic of Artsakh, as the Karabakh Armenians call themselves.
The Artsakh authorities said in a post on Telegram that no final agreement had been reached.
“CRIMINAL JUNTA CONSIGNED TO HISTORY“
Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has enjoyed de facto independence since breaking away in a war in the 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Restoring control has been a cherished dream for Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who launched a lightning military operation on Tuesday that quickly broke through Karabakh Armenian lines.
In a speech to the nation on Wednesday night, he said Azerbaijan had triumphed with an “iron fist.”
“After the surrender of the criminal junta, this source of tension, this den of poison, has already been consigned to history,” Aliyev said, focusing his anger on Karabakh’s leadership.
He said the region’s ethnic Armenians would enjoy full educational, cultural and religious rights. All ethnic groups and faiths would be united as “one fist — for Azerbaijan, for dignity, for the Motherland.”
Defeat is a bitter pill for the separatist Karabakh leadership and for Armenia, which helped its kin in the enclave to maintain their autonomy and fought two wars with Azerbaijan in the space of 30 years.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan acknowledged in a speech to mark his country’s independence day that Armenians were going through “untold physical and psychological suffering.”
But he said that, to guarantee its survival, his country badly needed peace: “an environment that is free from conflicts, inter-state, inter-ethnic conflicts.”
AZERBAIJAN OFFERS ARMENIA PEACE DRAFT
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday that Armenia’s restraint in not trying to block Baku’s offensive would
remove an obstacle
to peace between the two Caucasus neighbors. An aide to Aliyev said Baku had given Yerevan a new draft peace agreement, Russia’s RIA news agency reported.
Russia, which has peacekeepers in the region, also did nothing to stand in the way of the Azerbaijani offensive — a source of bitter resentment to many Armenians who looked to Moscow as an ally and protector.
In the Armenian capital Yerevan, thousands gathered on Wednesday to denounce their government’s failure to protect Karabakh.
Many demanded the resignation of Pashinyan, who presided over defeat to Azerbaijan in a six-week war in 2020 that paved the way for this week’s loss of Karabakh but nevertheless won re-election several months later.
In Karabakh, many ethnic Armenians have fled their homes in the past three days, some massing at the airport in the main city and others taking shelter with Russian peacekeepers.
Residents of Stepanakert, which Azerbaijan calls Khankendi, said there was no electricity, shops were bare, and people were lighting fires in courtyards to try to cook whatever food they could find. Authorities said they would hand out free food.
“There are a lot of displaced people from the villages, they were just moved to the city and had nowhere to spend the night,” said Gayane Sargsyan, who runs a wellness business in the city.
In a voice message, she told Reuters that rumors were swirling about what would happen next and people were in “chaos and bewilderment.”
Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians seek guarantees before handing weapons to Azerbaijan
https://arab.news/wr483
Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians seek guarantees before handing weapons to Azerbaijan
- Ethnic Armenian official: weapons surrender yet to be worked out
- Talks held after Azerbaijan reclaims control of Karabakh
About 400 immigrant children were detained longer than the recommended limit, ICE admits
- A Dec. 1 report from ICE indicated that about 400 immigrant children were held in custody for more than the 20-day limit during the reporting period from August to September
- Advocates documented injuries suffered by children and a lack of access to sufficient medical care
TEXAS, USA: Hundreds of immigrant children across the nation were detained for longer than the legal limit this summer, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has admitted in a court filing, alarming legal advocates who say the government is failing to safeguard children.
In a court filing Monday evening, attorneys for detainees highlighted the government’s own admissions to longer custody times for immigrant children, unsanitary conditions reported by families and monitors at federal facilities, and a renewed reliance on hotels for detention.
The reports were filed as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit launched in 1985 that led to the creation of the 1990s cornerstone policy known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, which limits the time children can spend in federal custody and requires them to be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. The Trump administration is attempting to end the agreement.
A Dec. 1 report from ICE indicated that about 400 immigrant children were held in custody for more than the 20-day limit during the reporting period from August to September. They also told the court the problem was widespread and not specific to a region or facility. The primary factors that prolonged their release were categorized into three groups: transportation delays, medical needs, and legal processing.
Legal advocates for the children contended those reasons do not prove lawful justifications for the delays in their release. They also cited examples that far exceeded the 20-day limit, including five children who were held for 168 days earlier this year.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Hotel use for temporary detention is allowed by the federal court for up to 72 hours, but attorneys questioned the government’s data, which they believe did not fully explain why children were held longer than three days in hotel rooms.
Conditions at the detention facilities continued to be an ongoing concern since the family detention site in Dilley, Texas, reopened this year.
Advocates documented injuries suffered by children and a lack of access to sufficient medical care. One child bleeding from an eye injury wasn’t seen by medical staff for two days. Another child’s foot was broken when a member of the staff dropped a volleyball net pole, according to the court filing. “Medical staff told one family whose child got food poisoning to only return if the child vomited eight times,” the advocates wrote in their response.
“Children get diarrhea, heartburn, stomach aches, and they give them food that literally has worms in it,” one person with a family staying at the facility in Dilley wrote in a declaration submitted to the court.
Chief US District Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California is scheduled to have a hearing on the reports next week, where she could decide if the court needs to intervene.
