'Severe malnutrition' is growing concern as thousands flee Nagorno-Karabakh, senior US official warns

Fears grew of a humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh Tuesday as a senior US official warned of malnutrition among the tens of thousands fleeing the breakaway region for Armenia.

Senior US officials - including US Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power and US State Department acting assistant secretary Yuri Kim - met Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the capital Yerevan Monday.

Power traveled to Yerevan "to affirm US support for Armenia's sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and democracy and help address humanitarian needs stemming from the recent violence in Nagorno-Karabakh," the aid agency said in a statement Monday.

The visit came days after Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive and said it had taken back full control of the breakaway region, sparking an exodus of the area's ethnic Armenian population.

By Tuesday evening, over 28,000 "forcibly displaced" people from Nagorno-Karabakh had arrived in Armenia, the Armenian government announced in a Facebook post.

Speaking from the Armenian village of Kornidzor, near the border with Azerbaijan, Power said, "It is absolutely critical that independent monitors as well as humanitarian organizations get access to the people in Nagorno-Karabakh who still have dire needs.

"The military attacks of last week have made a dire situation even worse," Power said Tuesday, adding that many of those who had arrived were suffering from "severe malnutrition," according to doctors at the scene.