Three Azerbaijani prisoners freed from captivity in ethnic Armenian
enclave
AP Worldstream
May 07, 2005
Azerbaijan said Saturday that three Azerbaijani soldiers taken
prisoner by ethnic Armenian authorities in the disputed enclave
of Nagorno-Karabakh had been released after nearly three months
of captivity.
The country’s official in charge of missing servicemen in the conflict,
Avaz Hasanov, said the release on Saturday had been brokered by the
International Committee of the Red Cross.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region inside Azerbaijan that has
been under the control of ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s,
following fighting that killed an estimated 30,000 people.
A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but the enclave’s final political
status has not been determined and shooting breaks out frequently
between the two sides, which face off across a demilitarized buffer
zone. The enclave is backed by Armenia.