KHOJALY TRAGEDY
KHOJALY TRAGEDY: Massacre of Khojaly
One of the most heinous crimes against the Azerbaijani people was the massacre of hundreds of defenseless inhabitants of the town of Khojaly, in the Nagorno Karabakh region of the Azerbaijan, which was taken by armenian troops on the night of February 25-26, 1992 in what was described by the Human Rights Watch as "the largest massacre to date in the conflict".
Khojaly is an Azerbaijani town strategically located on the Agdam – Shusha and Hankendi (Stepanakert) – Askeran roads in Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The town' population was over 7,000 people.
The Armenian armed forces and mercenary units spared virtually none of those who had been unable to flee Khojaly and the surrounding area. In the words of the journalist Chingiz Mustafaev, among the dead were "... dozens upon dozens of children between 2 and 15 years old, women and old people, in most cases shot at point-blank range in the head. The position of the bodies indicated that the people had been killed in cold blood, calculatedly, without any sign of a struggle or of having tried to escape.
Some had been taken aside and shot separately; many had been killed as entire families at once. Some corpses displayed several wounds, one of which was invariably in the head, suggesting that the wounded were executed. Some children were found with severed ears; the skin had been cut from the left side of an elderly woman's face; and men had been scalped. There were corpses that had clearly been robbed. The first time we arrived at the scene of the shootings of February 28, accompanied by two military helicopters, we saw from the air an open area about one kilometer across which was full with corpses almost everywhere..."
An inhabitant of Khojaly, Djanan Orudjev, also provided information on the many victims, mostly women and children. His 16-year-old son was shot, and his 23-year-old daughter with her twin children and another 18-year-old daughter who was pregnant, were taken hostage. Sana Talybova, who witnessed the tragedy as it unfolded, watched as four Meskheti Turks, refugees from Central Asia, and three Azerbaijanis were beheaded near the grave of an Armenian soldier; children were tortured and killed in front of their parents; and two Azerbaijanis had their eyes taken out with screwdrivers. The organized nature of the extermination of the population of Khojaly was evident from the killing, in previously prepared ambushes, of peaceful inhabitants who fled the town in desperation to save their lives. For example, Elman Mamedov, chief of administration in Khojaly, reported that a large group of people who had left Khojaly came under intensive fire from Armenian positions near the village of Nakhichevanik. Another resident of Khojaly, Sanubar Alekperova, reported numbers of corpses of women, children and old people near Nakhichevanik, where they fell into an ambush. Her mother and her two daughters, Sevinzh and Khidzhran, were killed and she herself was wounded. Faced with this mass shooting, some of the group made for the village of Gyulably, but there Armenians took some 200 people hostage. Among them was Dzhamil Mamedov; the Armenians tore out his nails, beat him and took away his grandson. His wife and daughter vanished without trace.
"I had heard a lot about wars, about the cruelly of the Fascists, but the Armenians were worse, killing five and six-year-old children, killing innocent civilians", said a French journalist, Jean-Yves Junet, who visited the scene of this mass murder of women, old people, children and defenders of Khojaly.
«Khojaly - The Last Day»,
Baku, Azrbaijan publishers, 1992.
The report of Memorial, a Moscow-based human rights group, on the massive violations of human rights committed during the massacre of Khojaly, says of the civilians flee in the town: "Efell into ambushes set by the Armenians and came under fire. Some of them nonetheless managed to gel into Agdam; others, mostly women and children, froze to death while lost in the mountains; others still, according to testimony from those who reached Agdam, were taken prisoner near the villages of Pirdzhamal and Nakhichevanik. There is evidence from inhabitants of Khojaly, who have already been exchanged, thai some of the prisoners were shot ... Around 200 bodies were brought into Agdam in this space of four days. Scores of the corpses bore traces of profanation. Doctors on a hospital train in Agdam noted no less than Four corpses that had been scalped and one that had been beheaded. State forensic examinations were carried in Agdam on 181 corpses (130 male and 51 female, including 13 children); the findings were that 151 people had died from gunshot wounds. 20 from shrapnel wounds and 10 from blows inflicted with a blunt instrument... The records of the hospital train in Agdam, through which almost all the injured inhabitants or defenders of Khojaly passed, refer to 598 cases of wounds or frostbite E and one case of live scalping." ("A tragedy whose perpetrators cannot be vindicated. A report by Memorial, the Moscow-based human rights group, on the massive violations of human rights committed in the taking of Khojaly on the night of February 25-26, 1992 by armed units.)
«Svoboda» newspaper,
June 12, 1992.
The massacre of Khojaly set a pattern of destruction and ethnic cleansing methodically carried out by the Armenian armed forces. On November 29, 1993, Newsweek quoted a senior US Government official as saying: "What we see now is a systematic destruction of every village in their way. It's vandalism."
Every year religious leaders of Azerbaijan; Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities issue appeals on the eve of commemoration of the massacre of Khojaly. This year four leaders of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish communities, the Orthodox Bishop of Baku and Caspian region, and the Spiritual Leader of Caucasus Muslims urged the international community to condemn the February 26, 1992 bloodshed and facilitate liberation of the occupied territories.
Religious leaders of Azerbaijan diverse communities stated their rejection of extremism and policy of ethnic cleansing conducted by Armenia. They see the future of Azerbaijan as beine a democratic secular society based on humanistic values.
MASSACRE BY ARMENIANS The New York Times, Tuesday, March 3, 1992 Agdam, Azerbaijan, March 2 (Reuters) - Fresh evidence emerged today of a massacre of civilians by Armenian militants in Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave of Azerbaijan. Scalping Reported Azerbaijani officials and journalists who flew briefly to the region by helicopter brought back three dead children with the back of their heads blown off. They said shooting by Armenians has prevented them from retrieving more bodies. "Women and children have been scalped," said Assad Faradshev, an aide to Nagorno-Karabakh's Azerbaijani Governor. "When we began to pick up bodies, they began firing at us." The Azerbaijani militia chief in Agdam, Rashid Mamedov, said: "The bodies are lying there like flocks of sheep. Even the fascists did nothing like this." Truckloads of Bodies Near Agdam on the outskirts of Nagorno-Karabakh, a Reuters photographer, Frederique Lengaigne, said she had seen two trucks filled with Azerbaijani bodies. "In the first one I counted 35, and it looked as though there were as many in the second," she said. "Some had their head cut off, and many had been burned. They were all men, and a few had been wearing khaki uniforms." ARMENIAN SOLDIERS MASSACRE HUNDREDS OF FLEEING FAMILIES The Sunday Times 1 March 1992 By Thomas Goltz, Agdam, Azerbaijan Survivors reported that Armenian soldiers shot and bayoneted more than 450 Azeris, many of them women and children. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were missing and feared dead. The attackers killed most of the soldiers and volunteers defending the women and children. They then turned their guns on the terrified refugees. The few survivors later described what happened: 'That's when the real slaughter began,' said Azer Hajiev, one of three soldiers to survive. 'The Armenians just shot and shot. And then they came in and started carving up people with their bayonets and knives.' 'They were shooting, shooting, shooting,' echoed Rasia Aslanova, who arrived in Agdam with other women and children who made their way through Armenian lines. She said her husband, Kayun, and a son-in-law were massacred in front of her. Her daughter was still missing. One boy who arrived in Agdam had an ear sliced off. The survivors said 2000 others, some of whom had fled separately, were still missing in the gruelling terrain; many could perish from their wounds or the cold. By late yesterday, 479 deaths had been registered at the morgue in Agdam's morgue, and 29 bodies had been buried in the cemetery. Of the seven corpses I saw awaiting burial, two were children and three were women, one shot through the chest at point blank range. Agdam hospital was a scene of carnage and terror. Doctors said they had 140 patients who escaped slaughter, most with bullet injuries or deep stab wounds. Nor were they safe in Agdam. On friday night rockets fell on the city which has a population of 150,000, destroying several buildings and killing one person. The SUNDAY TIMES, 8 March 1992 Thomas Goltz, the first to report the massacre by Armenian soldiers, reports from Agdam.Khojaly used to be a barren Azeri town, with empty shops and treeless dirt roads. Yet it was still home to thousands of Azeri people who, in happier times, tended fields and flocks of geese. Last week it was wiped off the map.
As sickening reports trickled in to the Azerbaijani border town of Agdam, and the bodies piled up in the morgues, there was little doubt that Khojaly and the stark foothills and gullies around it had been the site of the most terrible massacre since the Soviet Union broke apart. I was the last Westerner to visit Khojaly. That was in january and people were predicting their fate with grim resignation. Zumrut Ezoya, a mother of four on board the helicopter that ferried us into the town, called her community "sitting ducks, ready to get shot". She and her family were among the victims of the massacre by the Armenians on February 26. "The Armenians have taken all the outlying villages, one by one, and the government does nothing." Balakisi Sakikov, 55, a father of five, said. "Next they will drive us out or kill us all," said Dilbar, his wife. The couple, their three sons and three daughters were killed in the massacre, as were many other people I had spoken to. "It was close to the Armenian lines we knew we would have to cross. There was a road, and the first units of the column ran across then all hell broke loose. Bullets were raining down from all sides. we had just entered their trap." The Azeri defenders picked off one by one. Survivors say that Armenian forces then began a pitiless slaughter, firing at anything moved in the gullies. A video taken by an Azeri cameraman, wailing and crying as he filmed body after body, showed a grizzly trail of death leading towards higher, forested ground where the villagers had sought refuge from the Armenians. "The Armenians just shot and shot and shot," said Omar Veyselov, lying in hospital in Agdam with sharapnel wounds. "I saw my wife and daughter fall right by me." People wandered through the hospital corridors looking for news of the loved ones. Some vented their fury on foreigners: " Where is my daughter, where is my son ?" wailed a mother. "Raped. Butchered. Lost."CORPSES LITTER HILLS IN KARABAKH (ANATOL LIEVEN COMES UNDER FIRE WHILE FLYING TO INVESTIGATE THE MASS KILLINGS OF REFUGEES BY ARMENIAN TROOPS) The Times, 2 March 1992 As we swooped low over the snow-covered hills of Nagorno-Karabagh we saw the scattered corpses. Apparently, the refugees had been shot down as they ran. An Azerbaijani film of the places we flew over, shown to journalists afterwards, showed DOZENS OF CORPSES lying in various parts of the hills. The Azerbaijanis claim that AS MANY AS 1000 have died in a MASS KILLING of AZERBAIJANIS fleeing from the town of Khodjaly, seized by Armenians last week. A further 4,000 are believed to be wounded, frozen to death or missing. The civilian helicopter's job was to land in the mountains and pick up bodies at sites of the mass killings. The civilian helicopter picked up four corpses, and it was during this and a previous mission that an Azerbaijani cameraman filmed the several dozen bodies on the hillsides. Back at the airfield in Agdam, we took a look at the bodies the civilian helicopter had picked up. Two old men a small girl were covered with blood, their limbs contorted by the cold and rigor mortis. They had been shot. MASSACRE IN KHOJALY TIME, March 16, 1992 By Jill SMOLOWE -Reported by Yuri ZARAKHOVICH/Moscow While the details are argued, this much is plain: something grim and unconscionable happened in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly two weeks ago. So far, some 200 dead Azerbaijanis, many of them mutilated, have been transported out of the town tucked inside the Armenian-dominated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh for burial in neighboring Azerbaijan. The total number of deaths - the Azerbaijanis claim 1,324 civilians have been slaughtered, most of them women and children - is unknown. Videotapes circulated by the Azerbaijanis include images of defaced civilians, some of them scalped, others shot in the head. BBC1 Morning News at 07.37, Tuesday 3 March 1992 "BBC reporter was live on line and he claimed that he saw more than 100 bodies of Azeri men, women and children as well as a baby who are shot dead from their heads from a very short distance." BBC1 Morning News at 08:12, Tuesday 3 March 1992 "Very disturbing picture has shown that many civilian corpses who were picked up from mountain. Reporter said he, cameraman and Western Journalists have seen more than 100 corpses, who are men, women, children, massacred by Armenians. They have been shot dead from their heads as close as 1 meter. Picture also has shown nearly ten bodies (mainly women and children) are shot dead from their heads. Azerbaijan claimed that more than 1000 civilians massacred by Armenian forces." Channel 4 News at 19.00, Monday 2 March 1992 "2 French journalists have seen 32 corpses of men, women and children in civilian clothes. Many of them shot dead from their heads as close as less than 1 meter." THE FACE OF A MASSACRENewsweek 16 March 1992 By Pascal Privat with Steve Le Vine in Moscow "Azerbaijan was a charnel house again last week: a place of mourning refugees and dozens of mangled corpses dragged to a makeshift morgue behind the mosque. They were ordinary Azerbaijani men, women and children of Khojaly, a small village in war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh overrun by Armenian forces on Feb. 25-26. Many were killed at close range while trying to flee; some had their faces mutilated, others were scalped. While the victims' families mourned," Photo: `We will never forgive the Armenians': Azeri woman mourn a victim. Report from Karabakpress A merciless massacre of the civilian population of the small Azeri town of Khojali (Population 6000) in Karabagh, Azerbaijan, is reported to have taken place on the night of February 28 by the Soviet Armenian Army. Close to 1000 people are reported to have been massacred. Elderly and children were not spared. Many were badly beaten and shot at close range. A sense of rage and helplessness has overwhelmed the Azeri population in face of the well armed and equipped Armenian Army. The neighboring Azeri city of Aghdam outside of the Karabagh region has come under heavy Armenian artillery shelling. City hospital was hit and two pregnant women as well as a new born infant were killed. Azerbaijan is appealing to the international community to condemn such barbaric and ruthless attacks on its population and its sovereignty.Khojaly-sayt(Eng)
