28-year-old Ashot Beglaryan was deprived of his left leg, all the fingers of his right hand, and he can move only the thumb of his left hand. Ashot received these injuries as a result of the gasoline explosion that took place on September 25, 2023.
He is from Shushi, NK. Ashot has been serving in the Artsakh Defense Army since 2017. During the 2020 war, he participated in the defensive battles of Shushi in the air defense battalion. After the 44-Day War, he was transferred to Stepanakert. In September 2023, he participated in military operations near the village of Karashen.
“I was on duty that day, the fighting started, then we found out that the war had started,” Ashot recalls and continues that on September 20, he stepped down from his position and learned that he had to be deported from Artsakh.
“On September 23, there were reports that the enemy had already entered Stepanakert. People were taking their families to Ivanyan airport, where Russian peacekeepers were stationed. On the 25th of the month, I found out that they were providing gasoline at the Haykazov military unit. I went down to get some gas to take my family out.”
Ashot, like many others, was in the petrol queue when one of the petrol containers exploded. The blast wave threw him into a deep pit in the area.
“I don’t know how the explosion happened. There were large gasoline containers, I was standing near them, one of them exploded, a lot of people fell into the pit, and I fell too. The explosion threw us into I pit, which would have been about four meters deep,” Ashot told Forrights.am.
After the explosion, the fire reached his legs and they started to burn. “The gasoline got stuck, my legs started burning. When I fell into the pit, I wasn’t wearing pants anymore, it was burnt,” Ashot remembers the cruel moments he spent in that pit, where people begged for help, screamed in pain and suffered.
“People were screaming in the pit, they couldn’t stand the pain. There were seven people in the hole, all were trying to save themselves. One of them put his head under my arm, the other under my legs, so that the fire would not harm them too much; they wanted to be saved,” says Ashot and notes that he managed to get out of the pit with great difficulty.
Despite the burns, he tried to save people after coming out of the pit. He remembers with agony: there was a woman, he couldn’t pull her out of the hole because his fingers melted.
“I pulled myself out of the hole. There was a woman about 55 years old, she didn’t know what to do. I found an armature, I said, hold it with your hand, pull it, take it out, my fingers melted from the armature that I grabbed, I couldn’t pull that woman out,” he recalls.
After getting out of the pit, with multiple burns, he tried to go in another direction, away from the fire and explosions. Then he found out that there was another explosion after he left.
“My pants and my shoes were burnt; my coat was stuck to me and wouldn’t come off. I couldn’t take off my clothes, my fingers didn’t work at all. There was a boy, I told him to take it out, he couldn’t, he said it was stuck. I took out somehow. At that time, it was raining heavily. I went 600 meters by myself, then somebody from of our military unit recognized me, took me about 20 meters, I saw my uncle. I told my uncle to help me to go to the hospital. There was an army car in the area, they took it out of the trunk, it took us to Ivanyan hospital. I stayed in the hospital for a day and, on September 26, they transferred me to Armenia by helicopter.”
Ashot’s left leg and all the fingers of his right hand were removed in Yerevan. He has been going through treatment stages since October, they are not finished yet. Most of his problems remain, but he is certain that he will be overcome.
“I can’t move my fingers. They have to operate, but they said they won’t work, they have to fix them in some suitable position and they will stay like that. Now only my thumb works. If my fingers worked, it would be of great benefit to me,” he says.
Ashot’s father was also in the same place, his legs were also burned by the explosion. “We were not together at the scene of the incident. I didn’t know that my father was there; I found out later. He also overcomes the problems”, says Ashot optimistically.
Narek Kirakosyan