YEREVAN. – The remains of the three killed crew members of the Armenian helicopter, which Azerbaijan had shot down, were laid to their eternal rest on Tuesday at Yerablur Military Pantheon in capital city Yerevan, and in accordance with military traditions (Photos).

The funeral brought together the defense ministers of Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), high-ranking military officers from the two republics, politicians, and ordinary people.

NKR Defense Minister Movses Hakobyan, who is also Commander of the NKR Defense Army, handed to the families of the fallen soldiers the For Courage medals, which were posthumously awarded to them with the order of NKR President Bako Sahakyan.

Hakobyan presented Major Sergey Sahakyan’s posthumous medal to his young sons.

Armenia Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, for his part, thanked the persons behind and the executors of the military operation to retrieve the three pilots’ remains from the downed chopper.

“They are the ones who brilliantly reaffirmed yet again the Armenian army’s triumphant superiority over the impotent fury of the defeated invader,” the minister specifically noted.

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 very close to the Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact. As a result, three pilots were killed: the commander of the helicopter, Major Sergey Sahakyan, as well as Senior Lieutenant Sargis Nazaryan and Lieutenant Azat Sahakyan.

The adversary, on the other hand, was firing intensive shots toward the crash site, thus, not allowing access to the area.

But the remains of these three military servicemen plus some necessary parts of the chopper were retrieved from the helicopter’s crash site through a special operation by the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic armed forces. As a result, the Azerbaijanis suffered serious casualties, whereas the Armenian side sustained none.

Photo by Arsen Sargsyan/NEWS.am