Bayran Khalilov knew trouble was brewing when Azerbaijani government men came to dig trenches in his backyard facing the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The grizzled veteran of the original Karabakh conflict between ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis that killed 30,000 in the 1990s knew the shells were about to start falling again.
“These men came about one or two months ago and started digging,” he said in front of an L-shaped trench as wide as his narrow frame and deep enough to cover him standing.
Photo: AFP
“They said it was for your own basic safety,” the 68-year-old told a team of reporters that was granted access to frontline areas by the Azerbaijani government. “But we all then knew something was about to start.”
The origins of a flareup in fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh that has now killed hundreds and threatens to involve regional powers Turkey and Russia are hotly contested and difficult to independently verify.
Both sides accuse the other of striking first on Sept. 27 over the ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan.
Khalilov’s account suggests that at least some in Azerbaijan’s border regions were preparing for heavy fighting weeks before it broke out.
However, none of the people reporters spoke to in the frontier village of Bakharly knew what prompted Azerbaijani officials to start preparing trenches along the front.
“We are very grateful they did,” Khalilov said.
The shelling is all around Bakharly. The dusty settlement at the foot of the Caucasus mountains once housed 800 families displaced by decades of strife. Only about 100 men remain in Bakharly today.
Many who have stayed struggle to find the right words to explain what keeps them in the settlement under the shells.
“Why we are here — that is the most important question,” Sakhib Askerov said after showing off the trench dug behind his simple wooden house.
“Our boys are up there fighting,” he said of the mountains.
“By staying here, we feel that we are also fighting, holding on to our land,” the 66-year-old said.
Bakharly represents the outer reaches of Azerbaijani control in the central section of the conflict zone. The fields beyond it are part of a no-man’s land of the informal front.
Mikhail Ismailov walks 2km along these fields daily to buy a few flatbreads that he carries back home in a plastic bag.
He said the village endures “countless” bouts of shelling each night.
“This morning, they shelled our soldiers. Luckily they survived, with God’s help. I always watch our soldiers from here,” he said from his backyard.
“Every evening, we sit here and watch the fighting, first the shells coming from the Armenian side and then those going out from our side,” he said.
Armenian forces insist that they only return fire and otherwise try to respect a humanitarian ceasefire struck in Moscow on Saturday.
However, the fighting along the front is omnipresent and becomes especially fierce at night.
“Every evening when the shelling starts, we come here to stay safe, so that we don’t die,” Ismailov said, while showing reporters the inside of his trench.
“There is no fear. Our soldiers are fighting over there — why should I be scared here. We shouldn’t be scared,” he said.
However, fellow villager Akif Kasymov said some of the men do leave when the fighting gets too heavy.
Many of the houses along his gravel road stand with their roofs sheered off completely and their walls caved in.
Some of the more intact homes still have unfinished meals left on tables — telltale signs of families fleeing from sudden attacks.
“If it’s not heavy shelling, we stay,” Kasymov said. “We stay as long as we can.”
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
RSS