A total 377 "forcefully displaced persons" from Nagorno-Karabakh had crossed from Azerbaijan to Armenia Sunday evening, Yerevan authorities said.

Russian peacekeepers escorted bus convoys with civilians leaving Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia, the Russian defense ministry said on Sunday, TASS reported.

"In all, five buses and 41 private passenger cars were escorted by Russian peacekeepers. As many as 311 civilians, including 102 children, were evacuated," it said, according to TASS.

BBC, citing Armenian officials, reported 1,050 Karabakh people who lost their home crossing into Armenia.

Some of the refugees came from Eghtsahogh, where people took shelter around a Russian peacekeeping base after their village allegedly came under Azerbaijani shelling last week.

"Yesterday, we had to put down our rifles. So we left," a man in his 30s from the village of Mets Shen told Agence France-Presse.

"We had 15 minutes to pack everything up," he said, regretting having left behind his livestock and the grave of his three-year-old daughter.

Angry relatives of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is inside Azerbaijan, waited at the Kornidzor crossing, for news on their loved ones early on Sunday.

Azerbaijani troops defeated Armenian rebels in Nagorno-Karabakh last week and seized control of the territory inhabited by around 120,000 ethnic Armenians.

The separatists were disarmed under a truce brokered by Moscow on Friday, with Russian peacekeepers facilitating the demilitarization.

The first group of Nagorno-Karabakh refugees entered Armenia on Sunday, an AFP team at the border said.

Yerevan had promised to provide them with government-funded housing, BBC reported.

David Babayan, an adviser to Nagorno-Karabakh's ethnic Armenian leader Samvel Shahramanyan, told Reuters he expected almost everyone in the enclave to leave, according to BBC.

Karabakh people "do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan — 99.9 percent prefer to leave our historic lands," Babayan said.

WITH AFP