Some 28,000 people — about 23% of the region's population — have fled across the border since Azerbaijan defeated separatists who have governed the breakaway region for about 30 years in a swift military operation last week, according to Armenia's government.
The explosion took place as people lined up to fill their cars at a gas station outside Stepanakert, the region's capital, late Monday. The separatist government's human rights ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan said Tuesday evening that 68 people have died, another 290 were injured and 105 are still considered missing.
Armenian authorities also said that they brought 125 bodies over to Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh for identification. The country's Health Ministry clarified that all of those were killed in the fighting last week. U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement that the U.S. urged humanitarian access to Nagorno-Karabakh."The United States will continue to support those affected by the ongoing crisis as 28,000 people have crossed into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh,” she said.
Gasoline has been in short supply in Stepanakert for months, and the explosion further added to the shortages, compounding anxiety among many residents about whether they will be able drive the 35 kilometers to the border. Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region within Azerbaijan under the Soviet Union. Separatist sentiment grew in the USSR's dying years and then flared into war. Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, after a six-year separatist war that ended in 1994.
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