YEREVAN, December 19. /TASS/. Karabakh residents who suffer from serious illnesses are being deprived of essential medication and medical care due to Azerbaijan's blocking of the Lachin Corridor, which is the sole link there to the outside world, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote on his Twitter page on Monday.

"For eight days, the Lachin corridor has been shut by Azerbaijan, residents of Nagorno-Karabakh are stranded on the roads in the cold, and families are on different sides of the blockade. Citizens with serious health problems are being deprived of medicine and medical care," he wrote.

Scheduled operations in the medical institutions of Nagorno-Karabakh have been postponed, the republic’s Health Ministry said in a statement on Monday, according to the Yerevan-based 24News portal.·

"Due to Azerbaijan's blocking of the only road linking Artsakh (unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh - TASS) with Armenia, scheduled operations in medical institutions run by the Health Ministry of the Republic of Artsakh have stopped. Currently there is no shortage of essential medication and medical supplies necessary for first aid, but their delivery remains impossible", the statement said.

The ministry also reported that in the medical institutions "11 patients are in intensive care units, four of whom are in extremely serious condition." "<...> Ten children are in the intensive care unit. One of the children is in critical condition. Artsakh doctors are providing necessary medical care, consulting online with Armenian experts," the statement noted.

Early last week, a group of Azerbaijanis who posed as environmentalists blocked the Lachin Corridor, the only road linking Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh. Yerevan construed this step as a provocation by Baku, which was aimed at creating a humanitarian disaster in the unrecognized republic.