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Minaret in the center of the former city of Agdam:
"It is difficult to put my feelings into words"
Photo: Aziz Karimov / REUTERS
The city was their home, but only ruins remain.
Humay Novruzova and her brother Novruz arrive in Agdam on a cloudy day in December.
The drive from the Azerbaijani capital Baku took six hours.
Now they drive past the houses of the city - or what is left of them: a landscape of ruins.
There are no longer any roofs, doors or windows here.
"That was our school," says Humay Novruzova, pointing out the car window at a pile of stones.
You drive through a desecrated city, past a checkpoint, past the heaped earth wall that marked the front line of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for many years.
Ağdam was once a city with around 27,000 inhabitants.
Located in a plain, the area was known for its wine and in Soviet times for its cognac.
Even today, posts in the fields remind us that grape groves once stood here.
On the day of this visit, it has only been three weeks since the Armenian army had to evacuate the Agdam district.
After only 44 days she had lost the second Nagorno-Karabakh war.
The tanks of the Azerbaijani army rolled into the city without a fight.
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