Photos: Free wartime daily bread for Stepanakert residents

The bakery in the city of Stepanakert, that works 24 hours a day to offer free bread to the remain residents and delivering - when needed - to the towns of Martuni and Martakert, during the ongoing fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. They knead away, preparing dozens of slabs of dough which are whipped out and placed in two substantial electric ovens. Clad in a red apron over a blue waistcoat, baker's cap perched on her head, Lena Ghevondyan, 55, says she has been putting in "12 hours a day" at the bakery.

An unprepossessing hangar, grey and tatty with cardboard-covered windows, houses a bakery whose bread is a boon for residents and soldiers alike caught up in the fighting in Nagorno Karabakh's capital Stepanakert. Relative calm has reigned for three days now compared with the bombardments which had become almost the norm since the conflict with Azerbaijan started on September 27.

Her son, barely turned 20, has been up at the front line since September 26, the day before hostilities began. "If my son is there how could I leave here? I don't ask for anything else - my house can be destroyed but I want my son near me," says Ghevondyan, her brow perspiring from the heat of the ovens.

The bakery sells just one item - bread, and one variety at that: white loaves weighing roughly 700 grammes. It's also free. "From the first day of the war we decided to give it to residents for free and to work for the army too," says bakery owner Armen Saghyan, 31 and clad in army fatigues.

"We don't have financial problems. We get calls from institutions wanting to help us but we don't need it. If it is the case we shall turn to them," says Saghyan. A handful of Stepanakert bakeries are still making bread for those few people who have not fled a city which counted some 60,000 residents before the war erupted.

Square-jawed and with the build of a rugby player, Armen Abroyan, 41, works as a driver and deliveryman for the bakery. "We deliver every day whatever time people ask us to, at least six to eight times a day," says Abroyan. Above, people receive free bread from a bakery in the city of Stepanakert.

An elderly man receives free bread from a bakery in the city of Stepanakert.

As the latest batch of loaves are distributed Nelson Caspeyran, 59, is just one customer expressing surprise that they are being handed out free.

A man offers free bread to residents at a bakery in the city of Stepanakert, that works 24 hours a day to offer bread to the remain residents and delivering - when needed - to the cities of Martuni and Martakert.