Azerbaijan demolishes former Karabakh Armenian parliament building

Azerbaijani state television broadcast footage on Tuesday showing mechanical diggers destroying the building that once housed the breakaway ethnic Armenian parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The televised demolition, with giant metal claws tearing at the masonry of the gutted edifice, demonstratively underlined the restoration of control by Azerbaijan since its forces recaptured Karabakh last year and more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled.

The region had previously been de facto independent of Baku since a war that spanned the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

1988 when Christian Armenia and mostly Muslim Azerbaijan first went to war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, but the situation had calmed amid peace talks in recent months.

Azerbaijani state media said the parliament building, alongside a neighboring structure housing an Armenian war veterans’ association, had been demolished as they had been constructed “illegally.”

Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing – a charge denied by Baku, which has insisted the enclave’s Armenians were welcome to remain in the territory.

Karabakh Armenians say they left en masse because they do not feel safe in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held a military parade in November in the capital’s central square near the parliament building, and was filmed treading on a Karabakh Armenian separatist flag.

Armenians have accused Azerbaijan of destroying their cultural heritage in areas under Baku’s control, something Azerbaijan denies.

(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova in Baku; Writing by Felix Light in Tbilisi and Lucy Papachristou in London; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)