Gas Station Fireball Kills at Least 20 in Defeated Armenian Enclave

At least 20 people were killed and 300 more injured late Monday when a gas station exploded inside a war-torn Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan.

The fireball, the cause of which hasn’t been determined, was an additional tragedy for the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where Azeri troops have routed a three-decades-old separatist administration, sending thousands of people en mass to Armenia. 

More than 13,500 people — about 12% of the region's population — have crossed the border since Azerbaijan's swift military operation to fully reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh after three decades of separatist rule, Armenia's government said Tuesday morning.

The explosion rocked the region as people waited to gas up their cars at a station outside the regional capital of Stepanakert late Monday.

The separatist government's health department said that 13 bodies have been found and seven people have died of injuries from the blast, the Associated Press reported.

"The health condition of the majority is severe or extremely severe,” Gegham Stepanyan, Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, wrote on social media. “The medical capacities of Nagorno-Karabakh are not enough."

The health department said 290 people have been hospitalized, with scores in grave condition.

The Azerbaijani military routed Armenian forces in a 24-hour blitz last week, forcing the separatist authorities to agree to disarm and join talks on Nagorno-Karabakh's "reintegration" into Azerbaijan.

Speaking from the Armenian capital of Yerevan, USAID Director Samantha Power called on Azerbaijan "to maintain the ceasefire and take concrete steps to protect the rights of civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh."