Video: Azerbaijanis firing from armored vehicle on 13th c. monastery

PanARMENIAN.Net - Footage spreading online shows the Azerbaijani military firing from an armored vehicle and firearms on the 13th century Charektar Monastery in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Such attacks are in direct violation of the ICJ’s provisional measure concerning Armenian cultural heritage and must be investigated and prosecuted,” Caucasus Heritage Watch, an organization monitoring and documenting endangered and damaged cultural heritage using satellite imagery, said in a post on X.

The footage comes days after Azerbaijan launched a full-scale offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh, killings and injuring hundreds, including children. On September 20, the authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh agreed to a ceasefire on Azerbaijan’s terms, including the dissolution of the Defense Army.

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.