Armenian ministry corrects report on death toll from fuel depot blast in Nagorno-Karabakh
According to the department, the statement by its head Anahit Avanesyan that 125 bodies of the dead were taken out of Karabakh is not related to the explosion of a gas storage facility near Stepanakert
YEREVAN, September 26. /TASS/. An earlier statement by the Armenian Health Ministry about 125 bodies delivered from Nagorno-Karabakh didn’t mean to say it was the death toll from the recent explosion of a fuel depot in the region, the ministry said.
"Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan referred to the total number of remains that had been delivered from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia," the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, Avanesyan said at a news conference that "the remains of 125 people, who were killed in the explosion, were delivered from Nagorno-Karabakh today." She said the bodies would undergo identification at a forensic center and the data would be subsequently released to the public.
The explosion occurred at the fuel deport on the Stepanakert-Askeran road on Monday evening. According to Armenian news reports, citing the human rights commissioners of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh, the death toll from the blast was 68 as of 9 p.m. on Tuesday.