The Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan has released the names of soldiers who lost their lives while fighting in the recent February 24-25 skirmish along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Akshin Abdullayev, Shahlar Nazaroy, Tural Hashimli, Zulfu Qadimov and Zakir Jafarov perished in the fighting.
The Ministry of Defense had earlier stated that Armenian forces were in violation of terms allowing for the retrieval of fallen soldiers from the battle field with the help of international organizations.
However, as of 18:00 p.m. on Monday, the bodies have already been retrieved.
“On February 26, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe had planned a mission to retrieve the bodies of dead soldiers. However, this did not happen. When the operation was about to begin, Armenia prevented it from happening. They put forwards new demands that are unacceptable”, the Ministry statement commented.
The Armenian Armed Forces denied the allegations and accused Azerbaijan of similarly obstructing the recovery of fallen soldiers’ bodies.
The statement from the Ministry of Defense comes a day after the OSCE Minsk group co-chairs called the military clash in the conflict zone “a serious breach of ceasefire”, calling on both sides to abstain from using force and moving ahead from their current positions, and to instead allow each other to take the bodies of the soldiers remaining in the neutral zone.
Azerbaijan’s armed forces reported Saturday that a skirmish along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh had resulted in the destruction of an Armenian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and serious casualties on both sides.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a separatist region of Azerbaijan currently controlled by Armenian forces.
