On Tuesday, videos were spread on the Azerbaijani Internet domain, which, according to the Azerbaijani side, shows the bodies of six Armenian servicemen killed near the village of Hakaku in the occupied Hadrut region of Artsakh, the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Defense Army (DA) noted this in a statement on Wednesday.
“The Defense Army of the Artsakh Republic reaffirms its earlier statement that neither on December 27, nor in the previous days, nor in the following days, no DA unit, no servicemen were involved in any military operation, and did not fire even a single shot. The ceasefire regime has been and is maintained along the entire length of the line of contact.
Moreover, it is obvious that in the case of the presented ‘battles,’ Azerbaijan is talking about a village deep in the territories under their control, far enough from the front line, in order to end up, the DA servicemen had to cross the front line and carry out a military march behind the enemy, which, taking into account the presence of their own Azerbaijani armed forces’ units as well as the factor of the RF [Russian Federation] peacekeeping mission, is simply not possible.
No less important is also the ‘coincidence’ that yesterday Azerbaijan violated the agreement reached in advance and did not allow search groups to enter the areas where, according to them, these ‘battles’ took place. And this is in the case when the agreement on the work of the search groups in those areas was reached on December 27; that is, according to the Azerbaijani side, on the very day when the ‘battles had taken place.’
The combination of the mentioned facts makes it presumable that the actions and statements of the Azerbaijani side are aimed at concealing another war crime, and that is the purpose of refusing to allow search groups to enter the mentioned territories.
Active work is underway at present to find out the identities of the people depicted in the disseminated footage. The Defense Army does not rule out that we are dealing with the brutal murder of citizens who ended up in Azerbaijani captivity earlier.
We strongly condemn this working style of the Azerbaijani side, which contradicts the logic of the November 9 trilateral statement. The Artsakh Republic will be consistent in the matter of exposing the war crimes committed by Azerbaijan,” the Artsakh Defense Army statement also reads.