Armenia Investigative Committee head: 218 people had died in fuel depot blast near Karabakh capital Stepanakert

Emergency Case 5 January, 2024 20:01

A total of 218 people were killed, 120 were injured, and 21 are missing as a result of the explosion on September 25, 2023 at the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Defense Army fuel depot on the Stepanakert-Askeran motorway. Argishti Kyaramyan, Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Armenia, stated about this in an interview with the Public Television of Armenia.

According to him, three dead bodies from the aforesaid blast have not been identified yet, and this indicates that not all relatives of the victims have submitted a sample for DNA tests.

As per Kyaramyan, the Investigative Committee of Armenia is conducting the proceedings in this incident because the overall situation stems from the realities of Armenian ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan.

"If hundreds or thousands of people went, tried to obtain crucial fuel without giving each other a turn, it shows that they were in a desperate situation, which is evidence of the psychological state in which they found themselves due to Azerbaijan's actions. In such conditions, turmoil is inevitable," he said.

The chairman of the Investigative Committee of Armenia informed that the Artsakh Defense Army had formally handed over the management of the aforementioned fuel depot to the Artsakh authorities, and this had happened after the military aggression of September 19-20 by Azerbaijan, and presumably due to the process of disbanding the Artsakh Defense Army.

Kyaramyan, however, did not say whether there were persons on the ground responsible for the observance of safety rules and overseeing of the process of getting fuel from that depot, and noted that a respective investigation is still underway.

The chairman of the Investigative Committee of Armenia said that about 42 thousand tons of fuel was stored in that depot, but only the gasoline had ignited, causing the aforementioned explosion.