The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court warned that Azerbaijan is preparing genocide against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) and called for the U.N. Security Council to bring the matter before the international tribunal, the Associated Press reports.

Since December 12, 2022, the sole road connecting Nagorno Karabakh to Armenia - the Lachin Corridor - has been blocked by Azerbaijan. Baku tightened the blockade on June 15, 2023, banning emergency relief supplies that were carried out by Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of the Red Cross through the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia and the outside world. The move aggravated the shortages of food, medicine and other essential items experienced by the region’s population.

A report by Luis Moreno Ocampo issued Tuesday, August 8 said Azerbaijan’s blockade of the only road leading from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh seriously impedes food, medical supplies and other essentials to the region of about 120,000 people.

“There is a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed,” Ocampo’s report said, noting that a U.N. convention defines genocide as including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

“There are no crematories and there are no machete attacks. Starvation is the invisible genocide weapon. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks,” the report said.

In the Armenian village of Kornidzor, near the Azerbaijan border, a line of 19 trucks loaded with some 360 tons of medicine and food supplies and have been parked for two weeks waiting for permission to cross.