Svobodnaya pressa: "30 years have passed since Khojaly massacre - major tragedy of Karabakh war"

Svobodnaya Pressa carries an article dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Khojaly tragedy.

Report informs that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the Khojaly tragedy - the massacre of civilians in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly after it was captured by the Armenian military during the first Karabakh war. It adds that throughout these years, the tragedy has remained as a bleeding wound in the hearts of the Azerbaijani people and official Baku described the tragedy as genocide (this is recognized by many world countries) and, of course, it is one of the darkest pages of the already gloomy history of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

It adds that what happened on the night of February 25-26 was a real horror: “Khojaly residents were moving along the bed of the Gargar River to the city of Askeran, as well as to the city of Aghdam. Most of the residents were ambushed by Armenian militants: they were shot point-blank, while others were destined for an even most terrible fate. It is very difficult for eyewitnesses of those events to read the memoirs of, for example, Izvestiya newspaper correspondent Vadim Belykh about "gouged out eyes, cut off ears, split skulls with flayed skin".

The article further reads: “According to human rights activists, four days after the capture of the town, about 200 bodies were brought to neighboring Aghdam alone, including 13 children and 51 women. Human Rights Watch said upon trying to leave the town under the escort of several defenders, civilians came across Armenian military posts and they gunned them all down.”

The author also quoted Novoye Izvestiya as saying that the Armenian side claimed that the reason behind the death toll was because Armenian posts in the area came under fire by armed Azerbaijanis, who were escorting Khojaly residents via the provided `free corridor’, and thus forced Armenians to retaliate.

“However, no evidence was found to prove it; moreover, it is very strange to justify the deaths of innocent people in this way.”

The article cites proof that invalidates the reason provided by Armenians as an excuse. It was noted that the date of the Khojaly tragedy (the night of February 25-26) coincided with the 1988 Sumgayit events, which is not accidental, and in an interview with British journalist Thomas de Waal, former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan quite openly said that “Before Khojaly, Azerbaijanis thought that we were just joking with them. Azerbaijanis thought that Armenians could not raise a hand at civilian population. It was necessary to destroy all these thoughts, and it happened."

At the end of the article, there are points that reveal the ill character of Armenians: "A page on Wikipedia, dedicated to the Khojaly tragedy, states that in November 2019, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claimed that the massacre had been committed by Azerbaijanis, describing this massacre as `a big lie’". Armenian public organizations also deny the tragedy, calling the information about it the enemy propaganda. Therefore, it is not surprising that official Yerevan did not even try to investigate the tragic events of February 1992. Consequently, there is nothing strange that the bloody gap between Azerbaijan and Armenia has not decreased since then, and the flame of war has not been extinguished yet.”