After hiding in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) for 65 days, Gegham Petrosyan, a resident of a village near Hadrut town, and his elderly father were found and rescued. Gegham told Armenian News-NEWS.am how they managed to hide for more than two months.

"On October 4, I came to the village from Hadrut, when we saw that there were no more people in the village anymore, they were already burning the village from below. My father and I were in the middle of the village, at home. It was October 22…the Turk [i.e., the Azerbaijanis] entered in the morning, but in the evening they told us to go, it was already the last option. I said, no, whatever it is, I cannot arrange for my father to go. The cars came out, all the villagers left. At 9 o'clock in the morning you could see that the village was burning, the smoke was covering the whole village. I went out and saw two people going up to our house. We ‘solved’ their problem. I told my father to go out, it is already the end, if we have to stay, we will stay and it is our end. He did no, I will stay, I will enter here, I will enter the house there. I say they are coming while burning the village, where will you stay? I had a horse in the yard, everything was saddled, I put on my coat without anything, and I went out with him.

We went out to the forests above the village, we saw that it was clean there, we could stay there. There was a hut like a bus there where goods were stored, clothes were inside; we collected them and took them 100 meters above that in the field. We realized that we could not stay there long; we would hide in the forest again. We stayed there for a week. When they started to go up from the village, we went back to the village, I saw it was worse than waiting," Gegham said.

During all that time, Gegham and his father changed about five places, and during that time he found out what atrocities the adversary was committing in the village.

"The monument of 1945 was tied to an Ural [truck]; they pulled, not counting the monuments dedicated to the 1990s and 2016 they all destroyed. A cross of more than 200 kilograms was placed in front of our church; we came, saw that it was thrown. According to our calculations, it was already January 7. We were having dinner, we saw them shouting from above. ‘Gegham’, I said, ‘who is he?’ So he is a person who knows, who can say my name? There were two people with the Red Cross; one a Russian colonel, one a Turkish [i.e., Azerbaijani] major, they came, saw, photographed, left everything, we went on horseback," he said.