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Khojali (Azerbaijani: Xocalı), also called Khojaly, is a town and a rayon in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. It was the location of the Khojaly massacre in February 1992. Template:Azerbaijan

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== Khojaly (Khodjaly) massacare Brutal Face of Armenian Fundamentalism, Fascism and Hater This time sufferers are infants, women and elderly population == Bold text Khojaly, (known as Xocali and Khodjaly in the Azerbaijani and Russian spellings, respectively) which used to be an Azerbaijani populated town in the Karabakh (Qarabag in Azerbaijani) region of Azerbaijan with a population of 7 thousand people , where Armenian militants accomplished a brutal massacre of the hundreds of peaceful Azerbaijani civilians on the night of February 25-26, 1992. The gruesome statistics indicates that 613 people had been killed, of which 106 were women and 83 were children; 1275 taken hostage, 150 went missing; 487 people became disabled and invalid, 76 of whom are teenage boys and girls; 8 families had been comletely destroyed; 25 children had lost both of their parents, 130 children had lost one of their parents; and 56 people had been killed with extreme cruelty and torture. Sharing the fate of its population, the town of Khojaly had been completely destroyed as well.... Map of Khojaly, Karabakh, Azerbaijan

We have compiled and presented in this site reports and documents about one of the most outrageous crimes in the Caucasus of the late 20th century, which some equate to an act of genocide. Please note that this was the first attempt to compile available reports and sources on this issue on the Internet and we do not consider the current content (see the left frame) complete. Relevant materials are continously added once made available. Please visit this site again for updates. A more comprehensive account is available here. For a recent 8-page report summarizing Khojaly Massacre,click here .

Slaughter, not many know about

Twelve years have passed since then and still we have not heard the true and complete story of the Khojaly tragedy. It happened so that there was an airport in this town, and many of those who lived in Khojaly did not realize that this will cost them their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Yes, human race has changed and we used to refer to the society we lived in as "civilized". But is it?

What happened in Khojaly screams "NO!" A human being still exterminates another for a piece of land under the sun and can do it in a most savage way using not only guns, but also his perverted intelligence. The executor chooses his victims and executes them in a cold blooded manner with a purpose: to terrify others still alive, make them run away.

The victims were chosen, the executors were ready. The act started...

   "Around 200 bodies were brought into Agdam in the 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. ... 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 25/26 February 1992 by armed units", newspaper Svoboda, 12 June 1992.)"

   "I had heard a lot about wars, about the cruelty 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, op. cit.)
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   "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." (In the words of the journalist Chingiz Mustafaev, Khojaly - The Last Day, Baku, Azerbaijan publishing house, 1992)
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   More quotes 

The mere brutality of the massacres in Khojaly was aimed at preparing the grounds for subsequent massive refugee flows, since no one amongst civilians from Agdam, Shusha, Kelbadjar and other districts of Azerbaijan (total of 8 occupied regions) would have preferred to stay and witness another massacre by those, who chose to become executors by their own will. Khojaly was chosen as a stage for a slaughter at the very beginning of the large occupation campaign. Having created panic and fear the executors moved further:

    28 February 1992 - Khojaly
    8 May 1992 - Shusha
    18 May 1992 - Lachin
    3 April 1993 - Kelbajar
    28 June 1993 - Agdere

War

    23 July 1993 - Agdam
    23 August 1993 - Fizuli
    26 August 1993 - Djebrail
    30 September 1993 - Kubatly
    28 October 1993 - Zangelan and Goradiz

   "A group of 19 members of the Nukhiyev family from the village of Gorazly in the Fizuli district of Azerbaijan was said to have been taken hostage by ethnic Armenian forces at around 5pm on 2 July 1993. They had gathered for a wedding. Seven members have been released in exchanges since then and one, Vagif Kutais ogly Nukhiyev, is said to have died five to six months ago. The remaining 11 family members - four women, two men and five children, all named above - are reported by their relatives to remain held as hostages on the premises of the hospital in Khankendi (known to the Armenians as Stepanakert). The five children still detained, all girls, are Sevda (born 1980), Leyla (born 1983), Matanat (born 1983), Arzu (born 1986) and Narmina (born 1989)." From the Amnesty International archives 

War

Their advocates were ready too, ready to justify the crime. "Fight for the freedom", they say, no, they shout!

What a cynical notion for a mere act of slaughter! No prosecutions, no war criminals, only real politics and frantic propaganda in a cynical world.

World? What about it? The world replied with the United Nations Security Council resolutions: 822, 853, 874 and 884, which were nothing, but words. The last resolution from 12 November 1993 ended with "Decides to remain actively seized of the matter", but actually it did not. Territories are still occupied, hundreds of thousands are still living in tents in refugee camps under unbearably terrible conditions which no human being would wish to have.

How about the "Big Brother?" Yes, they were there, in Khojaly, 366th, notoriously known as the 666th, Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Russian Interior Ministry forces.

What about the democratic of all? They too came forward, but with the Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, barring US humanitarian aid to the needy refugees, and penalizing victims for being victims.

Yes, twelve years have passed, but still children of Khojaly are dying, this time in the refugee camps, not in a slaughter field.

War War

   "Every year hundreds of elderly people, women and children die in refugee camps as a result of diseases and epidemics." From the UN archives

Still no one has ever been prosecuted for the crimes committed in Khojaly.

• * *

What did mass media report?

Newsweek (November 29, 1993, p. 50)

   "Armenians occupy a quarter of Azerbaijan's territory, and they've displaced almost a million Azerbaijani civilians. Friends of Armenia's powerful lobby in Washington, including the U.S. Government are suddenly a bit aghast. 'What we see now is a systematic destruction of every village in their way' says a senior state department official. It's vandalism."

THE GUARDIAN, 2 September 1993

   NOWHERE TO HIDE FOR AZERI REFUGEES

   Armenia is pushing a new wave of displaced people towards Iran.

   Jonathan RUGMAN in Kanliq, south-west Azerbaijan, reports

   On the main road south through Kubatli province, thousands of men, women and children are packed into trucks at an Azeri checkpoint waiting for permission to leave. Helicopters shuttle in and out with the wounded, while a group of women sit wailing at the roadside, tearing at their bloodstained faces with their fingernails in a frenzy of grief.

   A new exodus of refugees is under way towards Azerbaijan's border with Iran as Armenia forces continue ignoring United Nations demands that they stop their offensive.

   This week the UNHCR began distributing 4,000 tents and 50,000 blankets to those displaced in the recent hostilities. The organisation said about 250,000 Azeris have been displaced so far this year and about 1 million since the massacre began in 1988.

    A man carries his elderly mother in the capital Baku. The UN says about 50,000 Azeris have been displaced this year.

   Newsweek 16 March 1992

   By Pascal Privat with Steve Le Vine in Moscow

   THE FACE OF A MASSACRE

   "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.

The New York Times, Tuesday, March 3, 1992

MASSACRE BY ARMENIANS

   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."

The Sunday Times 1 March 1992

   By Thomas Goltz, Agdam, Azerbaijan

ARMENIAN SOLDIERS MASSACRE HUNDREDS OF FLEEING FAMILIES

   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 Times, 2 March 1992

   CORPSES LITTER HILLS IN KARABAKH

   (ANATOL LIEVEN COMES UNDER FIRE WHILE FLYING TO INVESTIGATE

   THE MASS KILLINGS OF REFUGEES BY ARMENIAN TROOPS)

   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.

   TIME, March 16, 1992

   By Jill SMOLOWE

   -Reported by Yuri ZARAKHOVICH/Moscow

MASSACRE IN KHOJALY

   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."

   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.

   Boston Sunday Globe, November 21, 1993

   by Jon Auerbach

   Globe Correspondent

   CHAKHARLI, Azerbaijan -- The truckloads of scared and lost children, the sobbing mothers, the stench of sickness and the sea of blank faces in this mud-covered refugee camp obscure the deeper issue of why tens of thousands of Azeris have fled here.

   "What we see now is a systematic destruction of every village in their way," said one senior US official. "It's one of the most disgusting things we've seen."

   "It's vandalism," the US official said. "The idea that there is an aggressive intent in a sound conclusion."

   The United Nations estimates that there are more than 1 million refugees in Azerbaijan, roughly one seventh of the former Soviet republic's entire population. Thousands who fled to neighboring Iran are being slowly repatriated to refugee camps already bursting

   at the seams. But because of the Karabakh Armenians' policy of burning villages, relief organizations say there is no hope that the Azeris could return home anytime soon.

   At Chakharli, about 10 miles from Iran, more than 10,000 refugees are crammed into a makeshift tent city. Aziz Azizova, 33, arrived in the Iranian run camp about three weeks ago, after she and her five children were forced to flee their home in the village of Buik-Merjan.

   "I left my village with nothing, not even my shoes," she said. "You see how our children are living? Some of them are living right in the mud."

   Azizova, like thousands of others, escaped by fleeing across the Arax River into neighboring Iran. The UN estimates that around 300 Azeris, mainly women and children, drowned in the river's currents.

   One of the people who did make it across was Samaz Mamedova, a 40-year-old accountant. Sitting with friends in tent No. 566 on a recent day, Mamedova explained how the Armenians seized her village in less than a half hour, forcing the entire population toward the river in a chaotic scramble for survival.

   Cebbar Leygara, Kurdish Leader - October 13, 1992

   "Today's ethnic cleansing policies by the Serbians against Croatians and Muslims of Yugoslavia, as well as the Soviet Republic of Armenia's against the Muslim population of neighboring Azerbaijan, are really no different in their aspirations than the genocide perpetrated by the Armenian Government 78 years ago against the Turkish and Kurdish Muslims and Sephardic Jews living in these lands."

   Tofik Kasimov Azeri Leader - September 25, 1992

   "The crime of systematic cleansing by mass killing and extermination of the Muslim population in Soviet Republic of Armenia, Karabag, Bosnia and Herzegovina is an 'Islamic Holocaust' comparable to the extermination of 2.5 million Muslims by the Armenian Government during the WWI and of over 6 million European Jews during the WWII."

   The Times, 3 March 1992

MASSACRE UNCOVERED

   By ANATOL LIEVEN

   More than sixty bodies, including those of women and children, have been spotted on hillsides in Nagorno-Karabakh, confirming claims that Armenian troops massacred Azeri refugees. Hundreds are missing.

   Scattered amid the withered grass and bushes along a small valley and across the hillside beyond are the bodies of last Wednesday's massacre by Armenian forces of Azerbaijani refugees.

   In all, 31 bodies could be counted at the scene. At least another 31 have been taken into Agdam over the past five days. These figures do not include civilians reported killed when the Armenians stormed the Azerbaijani town of Khodjaly on Tuesday night. The figures also do not include other as yet undiscovered bodies

   Zahid Jabarov, a survivor of the massacre, said he saw up to 200 people shot down at the point we visited, and refugees who came by different routes have also told of being shot at repeatedly and of leaving a trail of bodies along their path. Around the bodies we saw were scattered possessions, clothing and personnel documents. The bodies themselves have been preserved by the bitter cold which killed others as they hid in the hills and forest after the massacre.All are the bodies of ordinary people, dressed in the poor, ugly clothing of workers.

   Of the 31 we saw, only one policeman and two apparent national volunteers were wearing uniform. All the rest were civilians, including eight women and three small children. Two groups, apparently families, had fallen together, the children cradled in the women's arms.

   Several of them, including one small girl, had terrible head injuries: only her face was left. Survivors have told how they saw Armenians shooting them point blank as they lay on the ground.

   THE COMMITTEE FOR PEOPLE'S HELP TO KARABAKH (OF THE) ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE AZERBAIJAN SSR - 1988

An Appeal to Mankind

   During the last three years Azerbaijan and its multinational population are vainly fighting for justice within the limits of the Soviet Union. All humanitarian, constitutional human rights guaranteed by the UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Helsinki Agreements, Human Problems International Forums, documents signed by the Soviet Union - all of them are violated.

   The USSR's President, government bodies do not defend Azerbaijan though they are all empowered to take necessary measures to guarantee life and peace.

   The 240,000 strong army of Armenian terrorists with Moscow's tacit consent wages an undeclared war of annihilation against Azerbaijan. As a result, a part of Azerbaijan has been occupied and annexed, thousands of people killed, thousands wounded.

   Some 400,000 Azerbaijanis have been brutally and inhumanly deported from the Armenian SSR, their historical homeland. Together with them 64,000 Russians and 62,000 Kurds have also been driven out, a part of them now settled in Azerbaijan. Some 80,000 Turkish-Meskhetians, Lezghins and representatives of other Caucasian nationalities who escaped from the Central Asia where the President and government bodies did not guarantee them the life and peace also suffered from these deportations.

   One of the scandalous vandalisms directed not only against Azerbaijan science but the world civilization as well is the Armenian extremists' destruction of the Karabakh scientific experimental base of The Institute of Genetics and Selection of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR.

   We beg you for humanitarian help and political assistance, for the honour and dignity of 7 million Azerbaijanis are violated, its territory, culture and history are trampled, its people are shot. There is persistent negative image of Azerbaijanians abroad, and this defamation is spread over the whole world by Soviet mass media, Armenian lobby in the USSR and the United States.

   We are for a united, indivisible, sovereign Azerbaijan, we are for a common Caucasian home proclaimed in 1918 by one of the founding fathers of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic - Muhammed Emin Rasulzade.

   But all these goals and expectations are trampled upon the Soviet leadership in favour of the Armenian expansionists encouraged by Moscow and intended to create a new '1,000 Year Reich' - the 'Great Armenia' - by annexing the neighboring lands.

   The world public opinion shed tears to save the whales, suffers for penguins dying out in the Antarctic Continent.

   But what about the lives of seven million human beings? If these people are Muslims, does it mean that they are less valuable? Can people be discriminated by their colour of skin or religion, by their residence or other attributes?

   All people are brothers, and we appeal to our brothers for help and understanding. This is not the first appeal of Azerbaijan to the world public opinion. Our previous appeals were unheard. However, we still carry the hope that the truth beyond the Russian and Armenian propaganda will one day reveal the extent of our suffering and stimulate at least as much help and compassion for Azerbaijan as tendered to whales and penguins.

   The Age, Melbourne, 6/3/92

   By Helen WOMACK - Agdam, Azerbaijan, Thursday

   The exact number of victims is still unclear, but there can be little doubt that Azeri civilians were massacred by Armenian Army in the snowy mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh last week.

   Refugees from the enclave town of Khojaly, sheltering in the Azeri border town of Agdam, give largely consistent accounts of how Armenians attacked their homes on the night of 25 February, chased those who fled and shot them in the surrounding forests. Yesterday, I saw 75 freshly dug graves in one cemetery in addition to four mutilated corpses we were shown in the mosque when we arrived in Agdam late on Tuesday. I also saw women and children with bullet wounds in a makeshift hospital in a string of railway carriages.

   Khojaly, an Azeri settlement in the enclave mostly populated by Armenians, had a population of about 6000. Mr. Rashid Mamedov Commander of Police in Agdam, said only about 500 escaped to his town. "So where are the rest?" Some might have taken prisoner, he said, or fled. Many bodies were still lying in the mountains because the Azeris were short of helicopters to retrieve them. He believed more than 1000 had perished, some of cold in temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees.

   When Azeris saw the Armenians with a convoy of armored personnel carriers, they realised they could not hope to defend themselves, and fled into the forests. In the small hours, the massacre started.

   Mr. Nasiru, who believes his wife and two children were taken prisoner, repeated what many other refugees have said - that troops of the former Soviet army helped the Armenians to attack Khojaly. "It is not my opinion, I saw it with my own eyes."

   The Washington Post 2/28/92

==

  Azerbijani Nagorno-Karabagh Victims Buried in Azerbaijani Town ==

   "Refugees claim hundreds died in Armenian Attack...Of seven bodies seen here today, two were children and three were women, one shot through the chest at what appeared to be close range. Another 120 refugees being treated at Agdam's hospital include many with multiple stab wounds."

   The New York Times, 3/6/92

   A Final Goodbye in Azerbaijan

   : "At a cemetery in Agdam, Azerbaijan, family members and friends grieved during the burial of victims massacred by the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabagh. Chingiz Iskandarov, right, hugged the coffin containing the remains of his brother, one of the victims. A copy of Koran lay atop the coffin."

   The Washington Post, 3/6/92

   Final Embrace

   : "Chingiz Iskenderov, right, weeps over coffin holding the remains of his brother as other relatives grieve at an Azarbaijani cemetery yesterday amid burial of victims killed by Armenians in Nagorno-Karabagh."

   The Washington Times, 3/2/92

   Armenian Raid Leaves Azeris Dead or Fleeing

   "...about 1,000 of Khojaly's 10,000 people were massacred by the Armenian Army in Tuesdays attack. Azerbaijani television showed truckloads of corpses being evacuated from the Khocaly area."

   The Independent, 2/29/92

   By Helen Womack

   "Elif Kaban, a Reuter correspondent in Agdam, reported that after a massacre on Wednesday, Azeris were burying scores of people who died when Armenians overran the town of Khojaly, the second-biggest Azeri settlement in the area. 'The world is turning its back on what's happening here. We are dying and you are just watching,' one mourner shouted at a group of journalists."

   Reuters, 2/12/92

Armenians Burn Azeri Village

   "Armenian Army attacked a strategic Azeri village...in Nagorno-Karabagh and burned it to the ground on Tuesday, Commonwealth television reported.

   Channel one television said the village of Malybeili, in the Khodzhalin district, was now cut off and a large number of wounded were left stranded.

   Itar-Tass news agency said several people were killed and 20 wounded in the attack on the village... Tass also said shells fired from Armenian villages into the Azeri populated town of Susha, just 6 miles south of Stepenakert, demolished two houses and damaged five others."

   The Washington Times, 3/3/92

Massacre Reports Horrify Azerbaijan

   "Azeri officials who returned from the scene to this town about nine miles away brought back three dead children, the backs of their heads blown off...'Women and children had been scalped,' said Assad Faradzev, an aide to Karabagh's Azeri governor. Azeri television showed pictures of one truckload of bodies brought to the Azeri town of Agdam, some with their faces apparently scratched with knives or their eyes gouged out."

   The Washington Post, 3/3/92

   Killings Rife in Nagorno-Karabagh

   "Journalists in the area reported seeing dozens of corpses, including some of the civilians, and Azerbaijani officials said Armenians began shooting at them when they sought to recover the bodies."

   The Times, (London) 3/3/92

Bodies Mark Site of Karabagh Massacre

   "A local truce was enforced to allow the Azerbaijanis to collect their dead and any refugees still hiding in the hills and forest. All are the bodies of ordinary people, dressed in the poor, ugly clorhing of workers...All the rest were civilians, including eight women and three small children. Two groups, apparently families, had fallen together, the children cradled in the women's arms. Several of them, including one small girl, had terrible head injuries: only her face was left. Survivors have told how they saw Armenians shooting them point blank as they lay on the ground."

   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."

   The Independent, London, 12/6/92

Painful Search

   The gruesome extent of February's killings of Azeris by Armenians in the town of Hojali is at last emerging in Azerbaijan - about 600 men, women and children dead.

   The State Prosecutor, Aydin Rasulov, the cheif investigator of a 15-man team looking into what Azerbaijan calls the "Hojali Massacre", said his figure of 600 people dead was a minimum on preliminary findings. A similar estimate was given by Elman Memmedov, the mayor of Hojali. An even higher one was printed in the Baku newspaper Ordu in May - 479 dead people named and more than 200 bodies reported unidentified. This figure of nearly 700 dead is quoted as official by Leila Yunusova, the new spokeswoman of the Azeri Ministry of Defence.

   FranCois Zen Ruffinen, head of delegation of the International Red Cross in Baku, said the Muslim imam of the nearby city of Agdam had reported a figure of 580 bodies received at his mosque from Hojali, most of them civilians. "We did not count the

   bodies. But the figure sems reasonable. It is no fantasy," Mr Zen Ruffinen said. "We have some idea since we gave the body bags and products to wash the dead."

   Mr Rasulov endeavours to give an unemotional estimate of the number of dead in the massacre. "Don't get worked up. It will take several months to get a final figure," the 43-year-old lawyer said at his small office.

   Mr Rasulov knows about these things. It took him two years to reach a firm conclusion that 131 people were killed and 714 wounded when Soviet troops and tanks crushed a nationalist uprising in Baku in January 1990.

   Officially, 184 people have so far been certified as dead, being the number of people that could be medically examined by the republic's forensic department. "This is just a small percentage of the dead," said Rafiq Youssifov, the republic's chief forensic scientist. "They were the only bodies brought to us. Remember the chaos and the fact that we are Muslims and have to wash and bury our dead within 24 hours."

   Of these 184 people, 51 were women, and 13 were children under 14 years old. Gunshots killed 151 people, shrapnel killed 20 and axes or blunt instruments killed 10. Exposure in the highland snows killed the last three. Thirty-three people showed signs of deliberate mutilation, including ears, noses, breasts or penises cut off and eyes gouged out, according to Professor Youssifov's report. Those 184 bodies examined were less than a third of those believed to have been killed, Mr Rasulov said.

   "There were too many bodies of dead and wounded on the ground to count properly: 470-500 in Hojali, 650-700 people by the stream and the road and 85-100 visible around Nakhchivanik village," Mr Manafov wrote in a statement countersigned by the helicopter pilot.

   "People waved up to us for help. We saw three dead children and one two-year-old alive by one dead woman. The live one was pulling at her arm for the mother to get up. We tried to land but Armenians started a barrage against our helicopter and we had to return."

   There has been no consolidation of the lists and figures in circulation because of the political upheavals of the last few months and the fact that nobody knows exactly who was in Hojali at the time - many inhabitants were displaced from other villages taken over by Armenian forces.

   The Independent, London, 12/6/92

   Photographs: Liu Heung / AP

   Frederique Lengaigne / Reuter

   Aref Sadikov sat quietly in the shade of a cafe-bar on the Caspian Sea esplanade of Baku and showed a line of stitches in his trousers, torn by an Armenian bullet as he fled the town of Hojali just over three months ago, writes Hugh Pope.

   "I'm still wearing the same clothes, I don't have any others," the 51-year-old carpenter said, beginning his account of the Hojali disaster. "I was wounded in five places, but I am lucky to be alive."

   Mr Sadikov and his wife were short of food, without electricity for more than a month, and cut off from helicopter flights for 12 days. They sensed the Armenian noose was tightening around the 2,000 to 3,000 people left in the straggling Azeri town on the edge of Karabakh.

   "At about 11pm a bombardment started such as we had never heard before, eight or nine kinds of weapons, artillery, heavy machine-guns, the lot," Mr Sadikov said.

   Soon neighbours were pouring down the street from the direction of the attack. Some huddled in shelters but others started fleeing the town, down a hill, through a stream and through the snow into a forest on the other side.

   To escape, the townspeople had to reach the Azeri town of Agdam about 15 miles away. They thought they were going to make it, until at about dawn they reached a bottleneck between the two Azeri villages of Nakhchivanik and Saderak.

   "None of my group was hurt up to then ... Then we were spotted by a car on the road, and the Armenian outposts started opening fire," Mr Sadikov said. Mr Sadikov said only 10 people from his group of 80 made it through, including his wife and militiaman son. Seven of his immediate relations died, including his 67-year-old elder brother.

   "I only had time to reach down and cover his face with his hat," he said, pulling his own big flat Turkish cap over his eyes. "We have never got any of the bodies back."

   The first groups were lucky to have the benefit of covering fire. One hero of the evacuation, Alif Hajief, was shot dead as he struggled to change a magazine while covering the third group's crossing, Mr Sadikov said.

   Another hero, Elman Memmedov, the mayor of Hojali, said he and several others spent the whole day of 26 February in the bushy hillside, surrounded by dead bodies as they tried to keep three Armenian armoured personnel carriers at bay.

   As the survivors staggered the last mile into Agdam, there was little comfort in a town from which most of the population was soon to flee.

   "The night after we reached the town there was a big Armenian rocket attack. Some people just kept going," Mr Sadikov said. "I had to get to the hospital for treatment. I was in a bad way. They even found a bullet in my sock."

   Victims of massacre: An Azeri woman mourns her son, killed in the Hojali massacre in February (left). Nurses struggle in primitive conditions (centre) to save a wounded man in a makeshift operating theatre set up in a train carriage. Grief-stricken relatives in the town of Agdam (right) weep over the coffin of another of the massacre victims. Calculating the final death toll has been complicated because Muslims bury their dead within 24 hours.

   Newsweek, November 29, 1993, p. 50

   "For the past seven months Armenian troops and tanks have swept across Azerbaijan -- a land grab exceeded only by what the Serbs have accomplished in Bosnia in the past year...Last month they pushed south all the way to the Iranian border, driving more than 60,000 Azerbaijani civilians across the Araks river into Iran -- and looting and torching vacant villages in their wake."

   Amnesty International
   International Secretariat
   1 Easton Street
   London WC1X 8DJ
   United Kingdom
   22 APRIL 1994

   ARMENIA - MUSLIM PRISONERS MURDERED IN "EXECUTION-TYPE SHOOTINGS"

   Forensic evidence released this month suggests that six Azerbaydzhani prisoners of war held in Armenia were victims of "execution-type shootings", according to a forensic expert.

   Following an announcement, in February, by the Armenian Foreign Ministry that eight Azerbaydzhani prisoners had been shot while attempting to escape, ten bodies were transferred from Armenia to Azerbaydzhan in March. Professor Derrick Pounder, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Dundee, United Kingdom, began post- mortem examinations on the bodies at the beginning of April. The bodies had also undergone previous examinations by both the Armenians and the Azeris.

   He found that six of the men - Rustam Ramazan ogly Agev, Elehan Guseyn ogly Akhmedov, Elman Mamed ogly Akhmedov, Kurchat Kiyaz ogly Mamedov, Eldar Chakhbaba ogly Mamedov and Faig Gabil ogly Guliyev - had been murdered by a single gunshot wound to the head. He also found that in three of the six cases the muzzle of the gun had been in contact with the head at the time the shot was fired. It was not possible to determine the range at which the shot had been fired in the other three cases owing to earlier removal of physical evidence.

   Professor Pounder concluded that the pattern of gunshot wounds was not consistent with allegations that the six men had been shot while attempting to escape, and said that the common pattern of the wounds was "strongly suggestive of execution-type shootings". Amnesty International is urging the Armenian authorities to conduct a prompt, impartial and thorough investigation into the deaths of these six men, to make the findings public, and to bring to justice any perpetrators of execution-style killings, within the bounds of international law.

   The human rights organization is also urging the Armenian authorities to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the remaining four men whose bodies were returned, in order to determine if criminal proceedings are necessary in their cases also. Professor Pounder found that one of these had wounds to the throat in a pattern of injury consistent with suicide, one died of a single gunshot wound to the chest, and in two instances the cause of death could not be determined.

   HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH HELSINKI

   (Formerly)

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   MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, TEL and FAX(7095)265-4448

   MARCH 2, 1994
   PRESIDENT LEVON TER-PETROSSIAN
   MARSHAL BAGRAMIAN PROSPECT, 26
   375019 YEREVAN
   BY FAX:52-15-81

   DEAR PRESIDENT TER-PETROSSIAN,

   HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH\HELSINKI (Formerly Helsinki Watch) is the largest human rights organisation in the United States. We have closely followed the Armenian massacre of the Azeri people in Nagorno Karabakh, and have published two reports on violations of the Geneva Conventions.

   I am writing you to express our organisation's deep concern about the deaths of Azerbaijani prisoners of war in Armenia. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the following men were shot to death in an Armenian detention camp in Sritak in late January or early February:

      1. Rustam Ramazan-oglu Agaev,(birthdate unknown), from Masalin District
      2. Elman Mamed-oglu Akhmedov, b. 1961, from Yevlakh District
      3. Elshan Hussein-oglu Akhmedov, b.1974, from Saatlin District
      4. Bakhram AKIF-oglu Giiasov,b. 1972, from Siazan
      5. FAIG Gabil-oglu Guliev, b.1969, from Baku
      6. Enver Asker-oglu Jafarov, b.1972, from Sumgait
      7. Eldar Shahbaba-oglu Mamedov, b.1966, from Baku
      8. Girshad Kniaz-oglu Mamedov, b.1974 from Yevlakh

   I thank you for your attention to this matter and look forward to learning the results of the investigation.

   Yours sincerely,

   Jeri Laber

   Executive Director 1

• Nagorno Karabakh
• Rayons of Azerbaijan
• Azerbaijan geography stubs