Azerbaijan’s president has raised the national flag over the capital of the former breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan retook the territory last month in a 24-hour lightning military offensive, prompting the vast majority of its ethnic Armenian population to flee.
President Ilham Aliyev was pictured raising his nation’s flag over the capital, which was known as Khankendi by Azerbaijan and as Stepanakert by Armenians.
He also delivered a speech, his presidential office said.
Most of the territory’s population of 120,000 ethnic Armenians have now fled to Armenia, many fearing persecution – although Azerbaijan had pledged to respect their rights.
Armenia’s Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, claimed the large-scale evacuation amounted to “a direct act of an ethnic cleansing and depriving people of their motherland”.
But Azerbaijan has rejected the accusation, arguing the mass migration by the region’s residents was “their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation”.
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The Karabakh region is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory.
It became a breakaway state under the control of ethnic Armenian forces in 1994 after six years of separatist fighting following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In 2020 Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in a 44-day war, with the remainder reclaimed in September’s offensive.
