Azerbaijan destroys entire Armenian village in Karabakh: report

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan has destroyed the Armenian village of Mokhrenes in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), according to a geo-located satellite image published by Geghard Foundation.

"Azerbaijan's vandalism is not limited to the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, churches and monasteries. Azerbaijan is deliberately destroying Armenian villages and neighborhoods. This time, the village of Mokhrenes in Hadrut Region, which came under Azerbaijani control during the 44-day war in 2020, has been completely destroyed," the foundation said in a statement on its Facebook page on Tuesday, November 5.

The foundation is noted that satellite images show that most of the houses, a school, a kindergarten and other buildings have been destroyed.

“In total, more than 40 houses and buildings were destroyed, while the Mokhrenes Surb Sarkis Church was completely razed by October 2022,” the report says.

The destruction of the Armenian Church of St. Sarkis (18th-19th centuries) in the village of Mokhrenes in the Hadrut region of Artsakh by Azerbaijanis was first reported by the Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW). The church in the village of Mokhrenes in Artsakh was operational until the Second Karabakh War in the fall of 2020. According to a CHW report, study note that in the list of Azerbaijani monuments, the Church of St. Sarkis was identified as Albanian temple #232.

Concerns about the preservation of cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh are made all the more urgent by the Azerbaijani government’s history of systemically destroying indigenous Armenian heritage—acts of both warfare and historical revisionism. The Azerbaijani government has secretly destroyed a striking number of cultural and religious artifacts in the late 20th century. Within Nakhichevan alone, a historically Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani forces destroyed at least 89 medieval churches, 5,840 khachkars (Armenian cross stones) and 22,000 historical tombstones between 1997 and 2006.