ICRC provided Baku with information on 400 burial sites of conflict victims

Baku/17.10.23/Turan: In 2014-2022, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) collected 10,800 biological samples from close relatives who went missing during the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. They are used to identify the remains, if they are found. Representatives of the ICRC told about this on Tuesday at an information session for journalists in Baku.

The collected materials were provided to the State Commission of Azerbaijan for Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons. The ICRC database contains data on 3,410 missing Azerbaijani citizens.

This statistic is close to the official data of the State Commission, which reports 3,890 missing Azerbaijani citizens.

In 2022, the ICRC provided the Government with information on 400 burial sites in the territories liberated in 2020.

Note that the information about 23 locations has been determined with high accuracy (GPS coordinates), 64 with average accuracy (radius +250 m) and 320 with low accuracy (name of villages, mountains, etc.).

Information about these places was received from 300 Azerbaijani prisoners who returned with the participation of the ICRC in the 1990s, as well as from relatives of the missing.

After the 2020 war, several burial sites were discovered and work is underway to identify the remains of an estimated 400 people. The remains of 25 people have already been identified and handed over to relatives.

During the information session, the ICRC representatives refuted the opinion that the Red Cross office in Karabakh was subordinate to the Red Cross office in Yerevan.

It was noted that Khankyandi was indicated in all reports of the organization as the territory of Azerbaijan. As for the transportation of goods carried out by the ICRC on the Lachin road, the organization's staff explained that the delivery of aid  was carried out by agreement between the parties.

As for the volume of aid for 30 years in the conflict zone, the largest budget was at the Barda office of the ICRC and this was due to needs.

In addition to helping the needy victims of the conflict, among the major projects of the ICRC in the 1990s was the provision of assistance to the penitentiary system of Azerbaijan in the fight against tuberculosis. At that time, Azerbaijan was the leader in the region in terms of the number of prisoners with tuberculosis. However, by the beginning of the noughties, Azerbaijan had the smallest indicator in the region.

At present, the ICRC continues to provide social, economic, medical, educational assistance to the victims of the conflict in Azerbaijan. The Red Cross also helps in educating the population about the danger of mines. -06C-