The scale of the destruction showed how desperate the fighting had become.
One Russian column,accompanied by Reuters reporters from the Armenian border,drove past around 100 dead ethnic Armenian soldiers strewn by the roadside.
One soldier lay prostrate in the middle of the road as the convoy laboured up a hill.
Cars,pierced with shrapnel,and vans littered the roadside as well as a burnt out tank and other damaged military vehicles. Several bodies were slumped in what looked like a bullet-riddled military ambulance. One of the dead men's legs was bandaged up,another dead man had a tourniquet.
Several roadside gravestones were damaged,and some bullet-riddled vehicles bore graffiti,including Swastikas and a reference to a bloody Soviet-era outbreak of ethnic violence against Armenians in then the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.
It was not clear who had left the graffiti.