Azerbaijan's president raises national flag in Nagorno-Karabakh capital
World
President Ilham Aliyev raised Azerbaijan's flag in the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday.
BAKU (AFP) - President Ilham Aliyev raised Azerbaijan's flag in the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday, cementing Baku's conquest of the region after last month's lightning offensive that led to an exodus of ethnic Armenians.
It was Aliyev's first visit to the city -- which Azerbaijan calls Khankendi and Armenia calls Stepanakert -- since it fell to Armenian separatists in the early 1990s.
Baku published images of Aliyev touring Karabakh after his forces swept through the mountainous region in a 24-hours September offensive that ended three decades of Armenian separatist rule.
"President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has raised the National Flag of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the city of Khankendi and delivered a speech," Aliyev's office said in a statement.
The vast majority of the estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenians that had been living in the territory have since fled to Armenia.
Images of Karabakh's main city after the Azerbaijani offensive showed a ghost town.
Aliyev's trip came exactly 20 years since he became president of Azerbaijan. Throughout his authoritarian rule he has vowed to bring Karabakh back under Azerbaijani control.
