YEREVAN. – The remains of the three killed crew members of the Armenian helicopter, which Azerbaijan had shot down, were brought out of St. Sargis Church in capital city Yerevan on Tuesday and in accordance with military traditions (Photos).

The relatives, friends, fellow servicemen and commanders of these pilots as well as hundreds of people had come to the church to bid them their last goodbye.

The funeral procession headed toward Yerablur Military Pantheon, where their bodies will be laid to eternal rest again in accordance with military traditions.

The Azerbaijani armed forces violated the ceasefire and shot down a Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (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 NKR armed forces. As a result, the Azerbaijanis suffered serious casualties, whereas the Armenian side sustained none.