Heavy resistance Defeats in late March already had the Azerbaijani military evacuating civilians out of the region to the northern town of
Yevlakh and Azerbaijan's second-largest city,
Ganja. The Armenians had assembled a force of several hundred men to enter Kalbajar from four different directions: Melkonian's detachment of tanks and troops from
Karabakh would attack from the southeast, one fifty-man unit from the town of
Vardenis, Armenia would enter from the west; the third force would attack from the village of
Aghdaban in the north, and the primary attacking force would come from the village of
Nareshtar. Kalbajar was protected only by a small group of defenders that received no reinforcements; a unit of 200 men attempting to reinforce the district was intercepted and defeated by
Samvel Karapetyan's unit. The troops in Vardenis began their assault shortly thereafter but their advance was slowed since they had to trek through the snowy passes of the Murov Mountains. On March 28, Melkonian's forces resumed their attack on Charektar and an eight-hour battle ensued until his forces were able to break through the defences. They advanced twenty-nine kilometres, reaching the
Tartar River on March 31.
Melkonian's advance The following two days saw a massive refugee column of cars and trucks "laden with bundles... bumper to bumper" trudging through the intersection. Melkonian ordered his forces to halt their advance until the remnants of the column dried up in the early afternoon of April 1. Assessing that most refugees had left, he ordered his units to advance and sent a detachment to guard a vital tunnel leading south towards Zulfugarli. While his troops had assumed that most civilians had left Kalbajar, they encountered a
GAZ-52 transport truck in the tunnel and, thinking it was a military vehicle, fired and destroyed it with
rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles. As they observed the wreck of the vehicle, the troops realized they had taken out a vehicle filled entirely with civilians: twenty-five Kurd and Azerbaijani
kolkhoz workers. Four of them, including the driver of the truck and his daughter, were killed. The rest were ordered by Melkonian to be taken to a hospital in Karabakh's capital of
Stepanakert; however, as many as eleven of them died. After the Zulufgarli incident, his forces pushed forward and reached another vital intersection leading to Ganja, fifteen kilometres away from the capital. Civilians in Kalbajar continued to be evacuated by both air and the through the intersection and Melkonian halted his advance by a further forty hours to allow the traffic column to move through. On April 1, his forces issued a radio message to the governor of the region, instructing his forces to leave the capital. An ultimatum was placed until 2 pm of the following day. Identified by his radio codename, "Khan", the governor responded and stated, "We're never going to leave... we'll fight to the end."
Final push As the deadline passed on April 2, Melkonian's armor entered the intersection and encountered a line of Azerbaijani tanks and infantry. A firefight ensued but lasted for only several minutes as the defence line was soon battered and destroyed. Many of the Azerbaijani forces were ill-prepared for the attack as Melkonian noted when pointing out to their lack of equipment. By April 3, the Armenian forces had encircled the capital and resistance had weakened. Azerbaijani commander
Surat Huseynov and his 709th brigade, which had been tasked to defending the Murov Mountains, had retreated to Ganja after political and military problems began to unravel upon in the battlefield. An account of the
war-weariness afflicting the inhabitants of the town was described by Melkonian's elder brother, Markar: Although his contingent did not reach in time for the fighting, the city's capital was taken. Aside from some farm life, the town had been largely abandoned. With the taking of the region, Armenian forces now held a continuous swath of territory stretching from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia proper, a total of 3,000 square kilometres. In the retreat through the Omar Pass of the Murov mountain range, many Azerbaijani refugees froze to death. With the last helicopters leaving on April 1, they were forced to walk through the heavy snow at freezing temperatures. Nearly 39,000 civilians were processed into the camps at
Yevlakh and
Dashkasan with as many as 15,000 unaccounted for. Four Azerbaijani
Mi-8 helicopters ferrying refugees and wounded out of the conflict zone crashed, the last of which was hit by Armenian forces. ==Political ramifications==