 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
Khojaly Genocide - The Tragedy of The XX Century Reference details: Markar Melkonian. “My Brother’s Road: An American’s Fateful Journey to Armenia”, I.B. Tauris, 2005, p 213-214 “But a few days after the victory at Vesalu, he faced even more brazen insubordination, with even bloodier results than Karadaghlu: on February 26, he stood on a slope near Khojalu, the site of his first recon operation three weeks earlier, and surveyed a trail of bloody shawls strewn across the brown grass and snow. As soon as he had arrived at Khojalu in response to reports of fighting, he had begun piercing together the story of the massacre that had just wound down, perhaps only an hour before his arrival. At about 11:00 p.m. the night before, some 2,000 Armenian fighters had advanced through the high grass on three sides of Khojalu, forcing the residents out through the open side to the east. By the morning of February 26, the refugees had made it to the eastern cusp of Mountainous Karabagh and had begun working their way downhill, toward safety in the Azeri city of Agdam, about six miles away. There, in the hillocks and within sight of safety, Mountainous Karabagh soldiers had chased them down. “They just shot and shot and shot,” a refugee woman, Raisha Aslanova, testified to a Human Rights Watch investigator. The Arabo fighters had then unsheathed the knives they had carried on their hips for so long, and began stabbing. Now, the only sound was the wind whistling through dry grass, a wind that was too early yet to blow away the stench of corpses. Monte had arrived in Martuni twenty-two days earlier, and since then he staggered across two killing fields soaked with the fresh blood of captives and unarmed peasants. When it came to adult males, fighters on both sides seldom distinguished between combatants and noncombatants. But until Khojalu, Armenian fighters had spared women and children, either releasing them or holding them hostage for prisoner exchanges. On this score, they had a better track record than their enemies. The attack on Khojalu, however, had gone some distance to even the score. Monte crunched over the grass where women and girls lay scattered like broken girls.” No discipline,” he muttered. He knew the significance of the day’s date: it was the run-up to the fourth anniversary of the anti-Armenian pogrom in the city of Sumgait. Khojalu had been a strategic goal, but it had also been an act of revenge.”  |
 |
The inhabitants of Khojaly ( about 2500 people) remained in the town before the tragic night tried to leave their houses after the beginning of the assault in the hope to find the way to the nearest place mainly populated by Azerbaijanis. But these plans have failed. Invaders destroyed Khojaly and with particular brutality implemented carnage over its peaceful population.
Armenian officials deny their responsibility for the crimes committed during the conflict, including against the population of Khojaly, airily falsifying facts and sharing own interpretations of them, which deviate not only from reality but also from elementary logic. Nevertheless, even the subtlest propaganda will never manage to disprove the facts that speak of a situation diametrically opposite to that represented by the Armenian side.
The facts mentioned above confirm that the intentional slaughter of the Khojaly town civilians on 25-26 February 1992, including children, elderly and women, was directed to their mass extermination only because they were Azerbaijanis. The Khojaly town was chosen as a stage for further occupation and ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijani territories, creating panic and fears the horrifying massacre.