They came down the mountain any way they could, some in battered old Soviet cars, back seats stuffed with duvets and coats, others packing into buses, babies and belongings in tow. One man made the hours-long journey driving a construction-site digger. 

The families, many looking exhausted and distressed, make up the more than 7,000 ethnic Armenians that have fled their homes in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region since an exodus of its 120,000 residents began on Sunday afternoon.

They travelled down the single, winding road that connects the region — a breakaway Armenian enclave in territory internationally recognised as Azerbaijan — to Armenia proper, arriving first to a tent camp and then to Goris, as a heavy, rainy mountain fog enveloped the southern Armenian town.