Azerbaijan on Saturday marked the fifth anniversary of the victory over separatists in Karabakh.

President Ilham Aliyev and a number of international guests attended a Victory Day military parade in the capital, Baku.

Among them were Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan's Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif.

Karabakh, formerly known as Nagorno-Karabakh, has been at the heart of a conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia

since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Although internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, the mountainous region was controlled for decades by ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.

Two wars — in the early 1990s and again in 2020 — left tens of thousands dead and displaced.

In 2023, Azerbaijan regained full control of the territory in a swift offensive.

After Azerbaijan regained full control of Karabakh, most of its 120,000 Armenian residents fled to Armenia.

Earlier this year, Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a U.S.-brokered agreement at the White House aimed at ending decades of hostilities.