The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on Wednesday urged Azerbaijan to give the Armenian side access to the wreckage of the Armenian helicopter shot down, and for recovering the bodies of its three crew members, the RFE/RL Armenian service reported.

The international mediators have issued their second statement with respect to this incident.

“We remain deeply concerned that there has been no humanitarian access to the crash site,” the co-chairs stated noting that the debris of the said chopper has fallen in a densely mined area at the neutral sector of the Line of Contact.   

“We call on the sides to cease firing in the vicinity of the crash site and facilitate the demining of the area surrounding the site,” they said in a joint statement. “In the spirit of the Astrakhan statement of October 2010 between the Presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, the Co-Chairs urge Azerbaijan to permit the recovery of the bodies of the victims, and Armenia to cooperate fully with all efforts to resolve this humanitarian situation.”

Stating that Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, is currently in the region together with his monitoring team, the OSCE Minsk Group mediators also encouraged the parties to the conflict to make use of his mission in order to secure access to the helicopter crash site.       

The Azerbaijani armed forces violated the ceasefire and shot down an NKR Air Force helicopter on November 12. The chopper was downed during a training flight, and it crashed on the Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact. As a result, three pilots are believed to have been killed: the commander of the helicopter, Major Sergey Sahakyan, as well as Senior Lieutenant Sargis Nazaryan and Lieutenant Azat Sahakyan. There were no weapons in the chopper. The adversary, on the other hand, continues to fire intensive shots toward the crash site, thus, not allowing access to the area.