More than 13,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh have arrived in Armenia Tuesday and more are leaving the breakaway territory of Azerbaijan fearing ethnic cleansing under Azeris who have taken over the enclave in a lightning offensive over the weekend.

Hundreds of vehicles also were heading to Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday, an Agence France-Presse team at the scene said.

The flow of vehicles was continuous, with families piling their belonging on top of their cars and stopping only a few seconds at the last Azerbaijani checkpoint before entering Armenia along the so-called Lachin Corridor, AFP reporters said.

Refugees were seen crowding into a humanitarian hub set up in a local theater in the city of Goris to register for transport and housing.

Amid the exodus that started Sunday, officials of the separatist government in the self-proclaimed republic said a fuel depot explosion on Monday had killed 20 people. They said 13 bodies were found at the scene of a fuel depot blast and seven more people had died of their injuries.

Another 290 people had been hospitalized and "dozens of patients remain in critical condition," they added.

Armenia's health ministry said it had sent a team of doctors to the rebel stronghold of Stepanakert by helicopter.

The Azerbaijani presidency said Baku had also sent medicine to help the wounded.

In Brussels, envoys from Baku and Yerevan prepared to meet in the first such encounter since Azerbaijan's swift defeat of separatist forces last week.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars in the last three decades over the majority ethnic Armenian enclave within the internationally recognized border of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan's operation on 19 September to seize control of the territory forced the separatists to lay down their arms under the terms of a ceasefire agreed the following day and brokered by Russia.

with AFP