(Reuters) – The United States on Thursday will announce it has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team in the South Caucasus region to coordinate the U.S. humanitarian response to the crisis after Azerbaijan took back control of Nagorno-Karabakh last week.
The team, first reported by Reuters, will assess the situation, identify priority needs to scale up assistance, and work with partners to provide urgently needed aid, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power will say in a statement seen by Reuters.
“The United States is deeply concerned about the safety of vulnerable populations in Nagorno-Karabakh and the more than 50,000 people who have fled to Armenia,” Power said in the statement.
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Power traveled to Armenia and Azerbaijan this week following Azerbaijan’s defeat of the breakaway region’s fighters in a conflict dating from the Soviet era.
She said Washington would stand in solidarity with Armenia and that it was essential the international community gained access to Karabakh, amid reports of unknown numbers of people being injured and requiring evacuation, or lacking food and other essentials.
