A mine blast in Azerbaijan’s Fuzuli region killed one civilian and injured another, the Interior Ministry’s press service reported on July 8.
Nuru Nuriyev lost his life as an anti-personnel mine blasted at 14:00 (GMT+4). Another civilian Elshan Hashimov lost both legs during the incident and was taken to the hospital.
Both civilians had entered Fuzuli without permission.
It should be noted that Nuru Nuriyev was detained in February for entering Fuzuli without permission. The Interior Ministry today urged the citizens to withhold from visiting the liberated territories.
Armenia planted hundreds of thousands of land mines in Azerbaijani territories it held under its control since the war in the 1990s. Some 140 Azerbaijani citizens were killed or injured in mine blasts in and around Nagorno-Karabakh since Azerbaijan regained control over its territories in the war in autumn 2020.
Initially, Armenia refused that such mines existed. However, it handed Baku the maps of landmines in Aghdam, Fuzuli and Zangilan regions in June in exchange for Armenian prisoners kept in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on February 26 described Armenia’s failure to provide the maps of mined areas in liberated lands as the main difficulty for Azerbaijani IPDs to return to their homes. He said that this can also be considered to be a war crime as several servicemen and civilians were killed in mine blasts on liberated territories after the war.
