11:08, 8 October 2020

Stepanakert residents live in shelters due to intense shelling

A building damaged by shelling in Stepanakert. Screenshot by the FRANCE 24 TV channel www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7yX8ITQ6YY

Most of October 7, residents of Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, spent in basements of their houses, equipped as shelters. All shops are closed, but townspeople have assured that they have everything they need.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Karabakh volunteers told the "Novaya Gazeta" newspaper that the losses of the Nagorno-Karabakh's Defence Army were much higher than those officially announced; and that soldiers lack weapons. Local residents associated the intensification of shelling with an imminent truce.

Intense hostilities continued on October 7, "the Defence Army has successes, but heavy fighting continues," the Karabakh Ministry of Defence (MoD) has reported.

Half of the population of Stepanakert is still in the city; and civilians from border communities are also there.

Earlier, Nagorno-Karabakh reported that Azerbaijani militaries had attacked Stepanakert with drones, damaging residential buildings. The attacks were also inflicted by missiles; and residents are in bomb shelters for several days already.

Sona Garakyan, a university lecturer, said that on October 7, in her opinion, apart from artillery shelling, Stepanakert was attacked by drones, which she noticed on the way to the shelter.

Nune Saakyan, a university teacher, has noted that in the first two or three days of bombings, there were children in the basement, but later they were taken to some safer place.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on October 8, 2020 at 00:35 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.

Author: Alvard Grigoryan, Tigran Petrosyan

Source: CK correspondents