Sighnag ( az, Sığnaq) or Sghnakh ( hy, Սղնախ) is a village in the

Khojaly District Khojaly District ( az, Xocalı rayonu) is one of the 66 districts of Azerbaijan. It is located in the west of the country and belongs to the Karabakh Economic Region. The district borders the districts of Kalbajar, Lachin, Shusha, Agdam and Khoj ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...

. The village had an ethnic

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

-majority population prior to the

2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was an armed conflict in 2020 that took place in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories. It was a major escalation of an unresolved conflict over the region, involving Azerbai ...

, and also had an Armenian majority in 1989.

History

During the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

period, the village was a part of the Askeran District of the

Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), DQMV, hy, Լեռնային Ղարաբաղի Ինքնավար Մարզ, ԼՂԻՄ was an autonomous oblast within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic that was created on July 7, 1923. Its cap ...

. After the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, the village was administrated as part of the

Askeran Province Askeran Province ( hy, Ասկերան) is a province of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, ''de jure'' part of the Khojaly District of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It is in the center of Artsakh, surrounding the capital, Stepanakert. It is not ...

of the breakaway

Republic of Artsakh Artsakh, officially the Republic of Artsakh () or the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (),, is a breakaway state in the South Caucasus whose territory is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan. Artsakh controls a part of the former ...

. The village was captured by Azerbaijan on 9 November 2020 during the

. In early July 2021, satellite images released by Caucasus Heritage Watch, a watchdog group made up of researchers from Purdue and

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach a ...

, revealed that an Armenian cemetery dating back to the eighteenth century was bulldozed in order to make way for a new road. This makes it the "second historic cemetery destroyed along the new Fuzuli-Shusha road, after Mets T’agher/Böyük Tağlar."ALERT:CHW confirms the destruction of an Armenian cemetery in the village of Sghnakh/Sığnaq, as first reported by Monument Watch...
"

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. 2 July 2021.

Historical heritage sites

Historical heritage sites in and around the village include the 19th-century church of ''Surb Astvatsatsin'' ( hy, Սուրբ Աստվածածին, ), a 19th-century cemetery, and a

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season) Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...

monument built in 1949.

Demographics

The village had 251 inhabitants in 2005, and 292 inhabitants in 2015.

References

External links

* Populated places in Khojaly District Populated places in Askeran Province {{Khojaly-geo-stub