Armenia says 2,317 soldiers dead in Karabakh conflict

Armenia on Saturday said that more than two thousand fighters were killed in six weeks of clashes with Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

To date, our forensic service has examined the corpses of 2,317 dead servicemen, including unidentified ones,” Armenian health ministry spokeswoman Alina Nikoghosyan wrote on Facebook.

The updated death toll from the Armenian side pushes its fatalities up by nearly 1,000 compared to the last confirmed toll among Armenian fighters.

Nearly two months of fierce clashes between the ex-Soviet rivals ended this week with a Russian-brokered peace accord that sees Armenia cede swathes of territory captured by Azerbaijan’s forces.

Baku’s army has never revealed details of its military fatalities, but the overall human cost of the fighting is expected to be much higher than reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the number of fatalities in the conflict was higher than 4,000 and that some 8,000 people had been left injured.

At least 143 civilians have been confirmed dead in the fighting.  Putin said that tens of thousands of people had been displaced by the heavy clashes that also left “civilian infrastructure and numerous cultural sites” destroyed.

The peace deal stipulates that Azerbaijan’s forces will retain control over areas seized in the fighting, including the second-largest town of Shusha, while Armenia agreed to a timetable to withdraw from large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions.