The spokesperson for the President of Artsakh Davit Babayan does not rule out that the Azerbaijani side has killed civilian people to use this against Armenians. He told this to armtimes.com, commenting on the violations of the ceasefire at the border between Artsakh and Azerbaijan and the punitive actions of the Armenian side. Babayan says the Azerbaijani armed forces are using their civilian population as a shield. “This is inhuman, terrible crime. They know that the Armenian side never targets peaceful population, even if the ceasefire is breached from that side, if there is danger that peaceful people may die, we do not fire. The emplacements that have been destroyed, there is no civilian population there.

Moreover, we know that Azerbaijan has “rich experience”, terribly bad experience of killing its people cruelly and blaming the Armenians. It particularly happened in Khojallu. We know that they committed a genocide and tried to blame it on us. Something similar to the April war took place. When the Artsakh forces counterattacked, a lot of people had abandoned those territories, about 300,000 people left in panic, and their abandoned homes were immediately looted by the Azerbaijani army, Turkish mercenaries and ISIS militants. There were cases of rape, murder, the same is repeating. We have published that people had left their homes, it is possible that they immediately went there for looting, and if people were there not to let their property go, they may kill them, whether children, women, it is even better for them to show that the Armenians have done that.”