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"Artsakh is Armenia!!!", read the banners, using the Armenian name for the enclave, as demonstrators gathered near a church in Bourj Hammoud, also carrying Lebanese and Armenian flags.

"We're here to show that we're with them with all our heart, we're thinking of them all the time, we're following all the news," said Karen Dekermendjian.

"We won't accept our land being taken from us or that they desecrate our land," said the young photographer taking part in one of numerous such demonstrations being held across the world by the Armenian diaspora.

About 140,000 Armenians remain in Lebanon, mostly descendants of survivors of the mass killings of their people under the Ottoman Empire from 1915.

They are the largest such community in the Middle East, and have their own schools and university as well as seats in the Lebanese cabinet and parliament.

Armenia and Azerbaijan on Friday held their first high-level talks after nearly two weeks of fierce clashes over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Renewed fighting since September 27 over Karabakh, which broke from Baku's control in a devastating war in the early 1990s, has cost hundreds of lives and forced thousands out of their homes.

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