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Khojaly massacre

The Khojaly massacre was the mass killing of Azerbaijani civilians by Armenian forces and the 366th CIS regiment in the town of Khojaly on 26 February 1992.[3][6][7][5][8] The event became the largest single massacre throughout the entire Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.[9]

Khojaly massacre

Azerbaijani civilians

200+ (per Human Rights Watch)[1][2]
485 (per Azerbaijani parliament)[3]
613 (per Azerbaijani government)[4]

Khojaly was an Azerbaijani-populated town of some 6,300 people in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of Azerbaijan SSR, also housing the region's only airport in 1992.[10] The town was subject to daily shelling and total blockade by Armenian forces during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Without supply of electricity, gas, or water, it was defended by the local forces consisting of about 160 lightly armed men. The Armenian forces, along with some troops of the 366th CIS regiment, launched an offensive in early 1992, forcing almost the entire Azerbaijani population of the enclave to flee, and committing "unconscionable acts of violence against civilians" as they fled.[1]


The massacre was one of the turning points during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. The death toll given by the Azerbaijani authorities is 613 civilians, including 106 women and 63 children.[4] According to Human Rights Watch, at least 200 Azerbaijanis were killed during the massacre, though as many as 500–1,000 may have died.[2][11][12] This number includes combatants and those who died of cold.[13]

Name

Most governments and media use the term massacre to refer to the incident.[14] Azerbaijani sources oftentimes refer to the massacre as a tragedy (Azerbaijani: Xocalı faciəsi) or a genocide (Xocalı soyqırımı).[15][16][17]

A survivor of the Khojaly massacre

A survivor of the Khojaly massacre

Azerbaijani refugees after the Khojaly massacre in train

Azerbaijani refugees after the Khojaly massacre in train

Victims of the massacre

Victims of the massacre

Maraga massacre

CNN International: Capturing war and revolution

Archived 18 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine

Report of Memorial Human rights center (In Russian)

ISBN 1-56432-081-2 ISBN 978-1-56432-081-0

Bloodshed in the Caucasus: escalation of the armed conflict in Nagorno Karabakh. Human Rights Watch, 1992.

Thomas De Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, NYU Press, 2004,  0-8147-1945-7. Chapter 11. August 1991 – May 1992: War Breaks Out. Online (In Russian): Глава 11. Август 1991 - май 1992 гг. Начало войны

ISBN

Victoria Ivleva. The corpses of people killed during the Armenian attack in the streets of the settlement of Khojaly, Nagorno-Karabakh, February 1992. , Photograph 2

Photograph 1

Walker J. Christopher (1996) The Armenian presence in mountainous Karabakh. In Wright F. R. John, Goldenberg Suzanne and Schofield Richard (eds.) Transcaucasian boundaries. London: UCL Press, pp. 89–111