'The world did nothing': Exhausted refugees flee Azerbaijan's crackdown on Nagorno-Karabakh

The people change, but the scene on Armenia's border with Azerbaijan, along the road coming from Nagorno-Karabakh, remains the same.

For three straight days now, people have streamed out of the besieged enclave, fleeing from Azerbaijan's newly imposed control. The border village of Kornidzor, the last Armenian settlement along the road, is a jumble of humanitarian aid points delivering food, water and other essentials to the refugees. 

They arrive packed in cars holding entire families, often with only the clothes on their backs and a handful of their possessions. Their homes and livelihoods have remained behind.

"We decided to leave three days ago," said Davit Azaryan, 45, from the Nagorno-Karabakh village of Haterk.

He crossed the border with his wife, son and two daughters.

"We spent an entire day on the road, without food or water. We had no [humanitarian] aid at all," he said.

Azaryan is one of nearly 30,000 ethnic Armenians who have fled Nagorno-Karabakh in the three days since the road out of the enclave was opened. The breakaway region's precarious existence came to an effective end last Tuesday, Sept. 19. That day, Azerbaijan, whose internationally recognized borders Nagorno-Karabakh sits within, launched an all-out assault on the territory.

After reports of more than 200 dead and 400 wounded in just 24 hours, Nagorno-Karabakh's authorities capitulated, agreeing to disband their army and allow the region to pass under Azerbaijani control.

That has led to today's exodus. Almost all of the region's 120,000 ethnic Armenian inhabitants reportedly say they will now leave, becoming refugees in Armenia.

"[Azerbaijan] shoots us, starves us, kills us," said Azaryan. "They kill our sons and brothers, brutally. I cannot live there," he said.

The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh dates back over three decades, to the waning days of the Soviet Union. Despite its overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian population, Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan.

As the Soviet Union collapsed, Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence, opposed by the authorities in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital. A war ensued, ending in 1994 with Nagorno-Karabakh under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.

That status quo endured until 2020, when a resurgent Azerbaijan launched a new assault to capture the region. The 44-day war saw only a small rump of Nagorno-Karabakh remaining. A ceasefire brokered by Russia saw Russian peacekeepers enter the region to maintain peace.

Last December, Azerbaijan blocked the territory's only road to Armenia and the outside world. That blockade tightened in June, with even Red Cross vehicles bringing crucial humanitarian aid into Nagorno-Karabakh barred from the region.