REPORT BY AZERBAIJAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS PRESS SERVICE
Today, Azerbaijanis around the world commemorate a National Day of Mourning. 16 years ago 613 innocent Azerbaijani civilians, including 63 children, had been brutally murdered by Armenian forces during military aggression against Azerbaijan. Another 1,000 people were wounded and 1,275 taken hostage. To this day, 150 people from Khojaly remain missing. International terrorists, including ethnic Armenian Monte Melkonian, were directly involved in the Khojaly massacre.
Major media outlets covering the story in the following days described the massacre with horror:
The Sunday Times reported the atrocity with the headline, “Armenian Soldiers Massacre
Hundreds of Fleeing Families” (March 1, 1992).
Newsweek magazine reported: “Many were killed at close range while trying to flee;
some had their faces mutilated, others were scalped” (March 16, 1992).
The New York Times also described beheadings and acts of scalping (March 3, 1992).
The Time magazine called the actions against Khojaly “grim and unconscionable,” reporting that many of those killed had been mutilated (March 16, 1992).
The Washington Times wrote that video footage “backed accounts of the slaughter of
women and children” (March 3, 1992).
Khojaly massacre is the grimmest part of the ethnic cleansings conducted by Armenia against hundreds of thousands of civilian Azerbaijanis in the Nagorno Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and other surrounding Azerbaijani territories. As stated Armenian officials, the aim of the Khojaly massacre was to break the will of Azerbaijanis to defend their lands. They didn’t reach their goal and Azerbaijanis, keeping high the memory of the Khojaly victims, will not tolerate continued occupation of their territories.
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