By Felix Light KORNIDZOR, Armenia - Vera Petrosyan, a 70-year-old retired teacher, said she and her family fled their home in Nagorno-Karabakh with just the clothes they were wearing andSaltWire's Atlantic regional weather forecast for September 26, 2023 | SaltWireKORNIDZOR, Armenia - Vera Petrosyan, a 70-year-old retired teacher, said she and her family fled their home in Nagorno-Karabakh with just the clothes they were wearing and does not believe she will ever be able to return after...
"We can live in tents, just let the children have their lives," said Petrosyan, a widow with two daughters, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Petrosyan is one of around 120,000 ethnic Armenians whose world has been turned upside down since Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive to take the contested mountainous region that Armenians had controlled for more than three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union.
"The fighting continued for a day. We were so scared. We lived in a cave for two days," she said, before being ferried away to the base of Russian peacekeepers where they stayed for another week before making the journey to Armenia.