Azerbaijan commemorates Khojaly genocide victims by minute of silence

The memory of the victims of the Khojaly genocide was revered by a minute of silence throughout Azerbaijan on February 26 at 17:00 (GMT+4).

The vehicles stopped on Baku’s streets at that time. Azerbaijan’s flags were flown at half-mast in the Azerbaijani cities and districts, villages and towns, as well as in the Azerbaijani diplomatic missions abroad, Report informs.

Thousands of Baku’s residents visited the monument to the tragedy victims erected in the Khatai district on February 26, revered the memory of the martyrs and laid flowers at the monument.

Today, February 26, is the 32nd anniversary of the Khojaly genocide and the occupation of the town of Khojaly by Armenian armed formations with the participation of the 366th Motorized Rifle Regiment of the former USSR.

The Khojaly genocide is the gravest crime of genocide committed against peaceful Azerbaijani people in the course of Armenia’s aggressive war against Azerbaijan. On the night of February 25-26, 1992, in violation of all international legal norms, Armenian armed forces attacked the civilian population of the sieged town of Khojaly with heavy military equipment, killing them with unprecedented brutality and razing the town to the ground.

As a result of crime against not only the people of Azerbaijan but against humanity, 613 civilian Azerbaijanis, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 elders were brutally murdered on grounds of national identity. The Khojaly genocide is one of a series of acts of mass slaughter aiming to crush those who rose up for the defence of their lands from Armenian armed forces’ aggression, to break their will to fight and annihilate the Azerbaijani population of then-time Nagorno-Karabakh.