Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry announced on Friday that its army units entered the Aghdam region as agreed upon in a cease-fire deal brokered by Russia last week to end the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Aghdam is the first of three territories outside the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave ceded by Armenian forces.
Armenian forces will roll out of the Kalbajar district on November 25 and from the Lachin district by December 1.
The three territories have been held by Armenia for about 30 years.
Armenian separatists also agreed to relinquish control over some parts of the Nagorno-Karabakh territory captured by Azerbaijan in the six-week fighting, including the historic town of Shusha.
The deal’s key provisions call for the complete withdrawal of Armenian forces and the immediate deployment of Russian peacekeepers to the area.
The truce that ended six-weeks of fighting that killed hundreds of people was celebrated as a victory in Baku but was received with protests in Armenia, where thousands of people took on the streets to demand the resignation of country’s prime minister.
However, the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, remains unresolved.
