More than half of its population has fled. Soon, Nagorno-Karabakh will no longer exist

When 23-year-old Ashot Gabriel woke up on Sept. 19, he feared that the months of increasing tension between Azerbaijan and the self-proclaimed but unrecognized enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh was about to erupt into violence.

That morning, Azerbaijani officials announced that six people were killed in two separate explosions triggered by land mines and blamed "illegal Armenian armed groups."

"We knew that something was coming," Gabriel told CBC News as he stopped to get water along a mountain pass highway in Armenia's southernmost province of Syunik.

"We started hearing the sounds of shelling and bombardment and we knew that the war had started."

Azerbaijan's swift offensive lasted 24 hours and ended in a Russian brokered ceasefire deal that called on Nagorno-Karabakh's armed forces to surrender and lay down their weapons. 

On Thursday, ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh said they were dissolving the breakaway statelet they had defended for three decades, where more than half the population has fled since Azerbaijan launched its lightning offensive.

In a statement, they said their self-declared Republic of Artsakh would "cease to exist" by Jan. 1, in what amounted to a formal capitulation to Azerbaijan. 

For Azerbaijan and its president, Ilham Aliyev, the outcome is a triumphant restoration of sovereignty over an area that is internationally recognized as part of its territory but whose ethnic Armenian majority won de facto independence in a war in the 1990s.   

For Armenians, it is a defeat and a national tragedy. Armenia said that by Thursday morning, 65,036 people had crossed into its territory, out of an estimated population of 120,000.

People crammed into cars and trucks, laden with belongings, continue to stream out of the enclave.

Gabriel and his parents are part of a long, informal convoy destined for Armenia's capital, Yerevan, but the teacher says he has no idea where they will be able to stay. He told CBC News he has never been displaced before despite growing up in a region that has been plagued by a protracted conflict for decades. 

He lived through violent clashes in 2016, and the 44-day war in 2020, but this time he fears there is no choice but to leave. He says it is not possible to integrate with a country that's killed civilians and established a months-long road blockade that led to widespread food, medicine and fuel shortages. 

Gabriel says some of his relatives are among the more than 100 still reported missing after a fuel tank exploded on Monday, where evacuees had been lining up before undertaking the arduous journey out. 

"The saddest part of all of this is that people are dying just because of the chaos caused by Azerbaijan."