Azerbaijan offers to hand over remains of war dead to Armenia amid 2nd attempt to observe truce

Some of the bodies of people killed during the flare-up in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh may be unilaterally handed over to Armenia, Azerbaijan has said amid a shaky ceasefire between the warring parties.

The offer was relayed on Sunday by Azerbaijani government’s commission on Captives, Missing and Hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which mediates humanitarian relations between the belligerents. The offer was made in the spirit of the ceasefire, to which Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on Saturday, the commission said.

If Yerevan accepts Baku’s offer, the ICRC will handle the logistics of the exchange in a prearranged location on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two countries are fighting over the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a part of Azerbaijan that unilaterally broke away from the nation in a bloody war in the early 1990s. Yerevan supports the region militarily while Baku considers it an integral part of the country temporarily occupied by Armenia.

The surge in hostilities started in late September. The attempt for a ceasefire is the second in as many weeks and remains shaky, as both sides accuse each other of violations.

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