Regional
Karabakh Armenians dissolve breakaway govt in capitulation to Azerbaijan
Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh said on Thursday they were dissolving the breakaway statelet they had defended for three decades, where more than half the population has fled since Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive last week.
In a statement, they said their self-declared Republic of Artsakh would “cease to exist” by Jan. 1, in what amounted to a formal capitulation to Azerbaijan.
For Azerbaijan and its president, Ilham Aliyev, the outcome is a triumphant restoration of sovereignty over an area that is internationally recognised as part of its territory but whose ethnic Armenian majority won de facto independence in a war in the 1990s, Reuters reported.
For Armenians, it is a defeat and a national tragedy.
Some 70,500 people had crossed into Armenia by early Thursday afternoon, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, out of an estimated population of 120,000.
“Analysis of the situation shows that in the coming days there will be no Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Interfax news agency quoted Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan as saying. “This is an act of ethnic cleansing.”
Azerbaijan denies that accusation, saying it is not forcing people to leave and that it will peacefully reintegrate the Karabakh region and guarantee the civic rights of the ethnic Armenians.
Karabakh Armenians say they do not trust that promise, mindful of a long history of bloodshed between the two sides including two wars since the break-up of the Soviet Union. For days they have fled en masse down the snaking mountain road through Azerbaijan that connects Karabakh to Armenia.
Azerbaijan’s ambassador to London, Elin Suleymanov, told Reuters in an interview that Baku did not want a mass exodus from Karabakh and was not encouraging people to leave.
He said Azerbaijan had not yet had a chance to prove what he said was its sincere commitment to provide secure and better living conditions for those ethnic Armenians who choose to stay.
The Kremlin said on Thursday it was closely monitoring the humanitarian situation in Karabakh and said Russian peacekeepers in the region were providing assistance to residents. It said Russian President Vladimir Putin had no plans to visit Armenia.
Western governments have also expressed alarm over the humanitarian crisis and demanded access for international observers to monitor Azerbaijan’s treatment of the local population.
Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said this week she had heard “very troubling reports of violence against civilians”.
Azerbaijan said Aliyev had told her at a meeting on Wednesday that the rights of ethnic Armenians would be protected by law, like those of other minorities.
“The Azerbaijani president noted that the civilian population had not been harmed during the anti-terrorist measures, and only illegal Armenian armed formations and military facilities had been targeted,” a statement said.
Aliyev’s office said on Thursday he was visiting Jabrayil, a city on the southern edge of Karabakh that was destroyed by Armenian forces in the 1990s, which Azerbaijan recaptured in 2020 and is now rebuilding.
While saying he had no quarrel with ordinary Karabakh Armenians, Aliyev last week described their leaders as a “criminal junta” that would be brought to justice.
A former head of Karabakh’s government, Ruben Vardanyan, was arrested on Wednesday as he tried to cross into Armenia. Azerbaijan’s state security service said on Thursday he was being charged with financing terrorism and with illegally crossing the Azerbaijani border last year.
David Babayan, an adviser to the Karabakh leadership, said in a statement he was voluntarily giving himself up to the Azerbaijani authorities.
Mass displacements have been a feature of the Karabakh conflict since it broke out in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union headed towards collapse.
Between 1988 and 1994 about 500,000 Azerbaijanis from Karabakh and the areas around it were expelled from their homes, while the conflict prompted 350,000 Armenians to leave Azerbaijan and 186,000 Azerbaijanis to leave Armenia, according to “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War”, a 2003 book by Caucasus scholar and analyst Thomas de Waal.
Many of the Armenians escaping this week in heavily laden cars, trucks, buses and even tractors said they were hungry and fearful.
“This is one of the darkest pages of Armenian history,” said Father David, a 33-year-old Armenian priest who came to the border to provide spiritual support for those arriving. “The whole of Armenian history is full of hardships.”
Regional
Trump rejects Iran’s response to US peace proposal as ‘unacceptable’
President Donald Trump’s swift rejection of Iran’s response to a U.S. peace proposal sent oil prices surging higher on Monday amid concerns the 10-week-old conflict will drag on, keeping shipping through the Strait of Hormuz paralyzed.
Days after the U.S. floated an offer in the hopes of re-opening negotiations, Iran on Sunday released a response focused on ending the war on all fronts, especially Lebanon, where U.S. ally Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. Tehran also included a demand for compensation for war damages and emphasized Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state TV said, Reuters reported.
It also called on the U.S. to end its naval blockade, guarantee no further attacks, lift sanctions and end a U.S. ban on Iranian oil sales, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said.
Within hours, Trump dismissed Iran’s proposal with a post on social media.
“I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, without giving further detail.
The U.S. had proposed an end to fighting before starting talks on more contentious issues, including Iran’s nuclear program.
Oil prices jumped $3 a barrel on Monday following news of the continued stalemate that leaves the narrow Strait of Hormuz largely closed. Before the war the waterway carried one-fifth of the world’s oil supply and has emerged as one of the central pressure points in the war.
Surveys show the war is unpopular with U.S. voters facing sharply higher gasoline prices less than six months before nationwide elections that will determine whether Trump’s Republican party retains control of Congress.
The U.S. has also found little international support, with NATO allies refusing calls to send ships to open the Strait of Hormuz without a full peace deal and an internationally mandated mission.
It’s not clear what fresh diplomatic or military steps may be ahead.
Trump is expected to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday. With mounting pressure to draw a line under the war and the global energy crisis it has ignited, Iran is among topics Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to discuss.
Trump has been leaning on China to use its influence to push Tehran to make a deal with Washington.
Addressing whether combat operations against Iran were over, Trump said in remarks aired on Sunday: “They are defeated, but that doesn’t mean they’re done.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war was not over because there was “more work to be done” to remove enriched uranium from Iran, dismantle enrichment sites and address Iran’s proxies and ballistic missile capabilities.
The best way to remove the enriched uranium would be through diplomacy, Netanyahu said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” But he did not rule out removing it by force.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a social media post that Iran would “never bow down to the enemy” and would “defend national interests with strength.”
Despite diplomatic efforts to break a deadlock, the threat to shipping lanes and the economies of the region remained high.
Recent days have seen the biggest flare-ups in fighting in and around the strait since a ceasefire began.
On Sunday, the United Arab Emirates said it intercepted two drones coming from Iran, while Qatar condemned a drone attack that hit a cargo ship coming from Abu Dhabi in its waters. Kuwait said its air defences had dealt with hostile drones that entered its airspace.
Clashes have also continued in southern Lebanon between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire announced on April 16.
An end to hostilities with Iran would not necessarily bring an end to the war in Lebanon, Netanyahu said in the “60 Minutes” interview, in which he also said Israeli planners had underestimated Iran’s ability to choke off traffic through the Hormuz Strait.
“It took a while for them to understand how big that risk is, which they understand now,” he said.
Regional
Fourteen Pakistani police officers killed in KP car bombing and shootout
The death toll from a suicide attack on a security post in northwest Pakistan rose to 14 police officers, authorities said early Sunday.
A suicide bomber and several gunmen detonated an explosives-laden vehicle near the post in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, late Saturday, said senior police official Sajjad Khan. The attack triggered an intense shootout, and some officers were killed in the exchange, while others died later after the building collapsed, the Associated Press reported.
Rescuers conducted an hourslong search operation using heavy machinery to retrieve bodies from under the rubble, Khan said, adding that three police officers were wounded in the attack.
Security forces have also launched an operation to track down the perpetrators.
A newly formed militant group, Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Regional
UAE countering Iranian air attack after Trump says ceasefire still in effect
U.S. ally the United Arab Emirates said its air defences were engaging missile and drone threats from Iran early on Friday in a further test of the shaky, month-long ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.
There were few details immediately available about the latest attack on the UAE, which came a day after the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire around the Strait of Hormuz, and as Washington awaited a response from Tehran to its proposal to end the conflict. Iran has often targeted the UAE and other Gulf countries that host U.S. bases since the war began on February 28, Reuters reported.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday three U.S. Navy destroyers were attacked as they moved through the strait, a conduit for around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows that Iran has all but closed since the conflict started.
“Three World Class American Destroyers just transited, very successfully, out of the Strait of Hormuz, under fire. There was no damage done to the three Destroyers, but great damage done to the Iranian attackers,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump later told reporters the ceasefire was still in effect and sought to play down the exchange.
“They trifled with us today. We blew them away,” Trump said in Washington.
Iran’s top joint military command accused the U.S. of violating the ceasefire by targeting an Iranian oil tanker and another ship, and of carrying out air attacks on civilian areas on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz and the nearby coastal areas of Bandar Khamir and Sirik on the mainland. The military said it responded by attacking U.S. military vessels east of the strait and south of the port of Chabahar.
A spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said the Iranian strikes inflicted “significant damage,” but U.S. Central Command said none of its assets were hit.
Iran’s Press TV later reported that, following several hours of fire, “the situation on Iranian islands and coastal cities by the Strait of Hormuz is back to normal now.”
The two sides have occasionally exchanged gunfire since the ceasefire took effect on April 7, with Iran hitting targets in Gulf countries including the UAE.
Oil prices rose in early trade in Asia on Friday, with Brent crude jumping above $100 a barrel after the latest clashes between the U.S. and Iran.
TRUMP URGES NEGOTIATED END TO WAR
Trump suggested ongoing talks with Tehran remained on track despite Thursday’s hostilities, telling reporters, “We’re negotiating with the Iranians.”
Before the latest strikes, the U.S. had floated a proposal that would formally end the conflict but did not address key U.S. demands that Iran suspend its nuclear work and reopen the strait.
Tehran said it had not yet reached a decision on the emerging plan.
Even so, Trump said Tehran had acknowledged his demand that Iran could never get a nuclear weapon, a prohibition he said was spelled out in the U.S. proposal.
“There’s zero chance. And they know that, and they’ve agreed to that. Let’s see if they are willing to sign it,” Trump said.
Asked when any deal might be reached, Trump said, “It might not happen, but it could happen any day. I believe they want to deal more than I do.”
The war has tested Trump’s relationship with his U.S. base of supporters, after he had campaigned against involving the United States in foreign wars and promised to bring down fuel prices.
Average U.S. gasoline prices have climbed more than 40% since late February, rising by about $1.20 a gallon to more than $4, according to data from the American Automobile Association, as disruptions to oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz pushed crude oil prices higher.
-
Business3 days agoNew Afghanistan-China transport corridor launched via Turkmenistan
-
Sport2 days agoCanada to host opening ceremony for FIFA World Cup 2026 in Toronto
-
Latest News2 days agoSAARC failure pushes Pakistan toward trilateral ties with Afghanistan, China, Bangladesh: Dar
-
Science & Technology3 days agoJames Webb Telescope captures clearest-ever view of exoplanet’s surface
-
Regional4 days agoUS and Iran closing in on one-page memo to end war, Axios reports
-
Sport2 days agoAfghanistan rises 7 places to 21st in FIFA Futsal World Rankings
-
Sport2 days agoLos Angeles to welcome the world with historic FIFA World Cup 2026 opening event
-
Sport2 days agoAfghan cricket delegation travels to China for technical cooperation
