Eurasia Press & News
Hundreds of Armenians from the diaspora are believed to have signed up as volunteers to fight against Azerbaijan in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory.
Already Lebanese Armenians have joined the fight, with at least one Lebanese Armenian already having been killed, AP reported adding that an unknown number of Lebanon’s large ethnically-Armenian population have traveled to the southern Caucasus to defend their ancestral homeland.
Several residents of Beirut’s main Armenian district, Bourj Hammoud, told AP that they too are ready to abandon their lives in Lebanon to fight against Azerbaijan.
“We will fight until the last Armenian soldier,” one shop owner was quoted as saying. “This is not a war between Muslims and Christians. This is a war for the existence of the Armenian entity and we are ready.”
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Turkey has apparently sent nearly 1,250 Syrian mercenaries to fight alongside Azerbaijani forces. Syrian fighters were encouraged by a $1,500 a month bounty, which is a lot of money in the war-torn country. Azerbaijan and Turkey have denied the “mercenaries” claim.
To date, at least 500 people, including more than 60 civilians, have been killed in Nagorno-Karabakh despite efforts, by Russia, to broker a ceasefire – which was shattered on Monday after clashes broke out in the southern region of Hadrut.
The decades-old dispute concerns territory considered part of Azerbaijan by the United Nations but with a population of Christian ethnic-Armenian separatists. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-year war over the disputed territory, ending with a ceasefire in 1994, but no peace agreement resolving the issue has ever been signed.
