Khojaly tragedy - 25 years

On February 26, 1992, Armenian military committed an act of genocide against the 7,000 population of the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly.

As many as 613 people, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 old people were killed as a result of the massacre. A total of 1,000 civilians became disabled in the onslaught. Eight families were completely annihilated, 130 children lost one parent, while 25 lost both parents. Some 1,275 innocent residents were taken hostage, while the fate of 150 people still remains unknown, Trend writes.

A part of the town residents, who attempted to flee, were killed by Armenians in pre-organized ambushes. According to the Russian Remedial Center Memorial, 200 corpses were brought from Khojaly to Agdam within four days of the massacre. Facts of humiliation on dozens of bodies were registered. Forensic examination in Agdam was performed on 181 corpses, including 13 children. The examination revealed that 151 people died from bullet wounds, 20 people died from shrapnel wounds, 10 were killed with blunt instruments. Facts of scalping people alive were also revealed. The Khojaly genocide has become one of the most terrible and tragic pages of Azerbaijani history.

As doctor of historical sciences Ruslan Shevchenko noted in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, organizers of the Khojaly massacre are trying to distort the facts about this tragedy even today. "Murderers' point of view still dominates of European and other media. Throughout the '90s, we almost didn't see any other positions, although we expected European researchers to express them, Western journalists visited Khojaly, after all. But many people still don't know the essence of this tragedy. Victims of Khojaly tragedy were honored only in the XXI century. If such work will be continued, we can expect that the entire international community will realize what monstrous crime have Khojaly nationalists committed," he said.

Political scientist Sergey Markov pointed out the uniqueness of Khojaly massacre. The tragedy of Khojaly has become a striking demonstration of willingness to break all the taboos, it was a violence against civilians. Today, honoring the memory of Khojaly massacre, we can only hope that it will never happen again," he said.