Khojaly Remembrance Day: NEVER FORGET KHOJALY!

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63 children. 106 women. 70 elderly. All mercilessly killed.

The night of 25th February 1992, the city of Khojaly in Azerbaijan witnessed brutal bloodshed as a total of 613 Azeris lost their lives. In addition to those killed, a total of 150 went missing, 487 were injured and 155 children were left orphans.

This genocide is recognised by the Memorial Human Rights Centre, Human Rights Watch and other international observers as having been committed by the Armenian armed forces along with help from military personnel of the 366th CIS regiment.

The tragedy of Khojaly is considered the largest massacre of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Once the assault began, around 2,500 remaining inhabitants tried to leave with the hope to reach the nearest area under Azerbaijani control. The fleeing people were ambushed and either killed by gunfire from Armenian military posts or captured near the villages of Nakhchivanly and Pirjamal, of which a total of 1275 was taken hostage. Others, mainly women and children, died from frostbite while wandering in the mountains. Only a few were able to reach the Azerbaijani-controlled town of Aghdam.

There are many heartbreaking first-hand accounts of the aftermath. Chingiz Mustafaev, an Azerbaijani journalist, recalled the aftermath of the tragedy in these words: “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, there were no signs of resistance of attempts to escape. Some had been taken aside and shot individually; in many cases whole families had been killed. Some corpses displayed several wounds, one of which was invariably to the head, suggesting that the wounded had been finished off. Some children were found with severed ears; 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”

Let us never forget the tragedy which stripped so many of their lives.

If you would like to find out more visit www.justiceforkhojaly.org which includes the latest news and events.