Azerbaijan commemorates 23 servicemen martyred in Dashbashi

Today is the day of remembrance of 23 servicemen, who got martyred at the Dashbashi post between liberated Jabrayil District and Khojavand District.

At about 04:00 on August 15, 1993, an Armenian armed group that suddenly attacked the Dashbashi checkpoint brutally killed 23 Azerbaijani soldiers, Caliber.Az reports.

The post of Dashbashi was the most important position for the defence of Jabrayil. In this unequal battle, there were twice as many Armenian forces as Azerbaijani fighters.

The enemies who temporarily occupied the post did not stop at killing 23 young people, they desecrated their corpses, and mutilated them beyond recognition.

The post of Dashbashi and the village of the same name, located between Jabrayil and Khojavand districts, were liberated from Armenian occupation after 27 years - on October 20, 2020. The Armenians suffered serious losses in the battles in this direction.

About 30,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and one million got displaced from their ancestral lands during the first Karabakh war from 1988 to 1994. 

In the early 1990s, Armenians perpetrated systematic crimes and atrocities against Azerbaijanis to break the spirit of the nation and annihilate the Azerbaijani people of Karabakh. The Khojaly genocide is regarded as the culmination of Armenian mass murders.

Some 613 Azerbaijanis, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 elders were brutally murdered on the ground of national identity in Khojaly in 1992.

This heinous act was preceded by a slew of others. Armenians set fire to around 20 buildings in Gazakh District's Baghanis-Ayrim village, killing eight Azerbaijanis. A family of five, including a 39-day-old newborn, were all burnt alive.

Between June and December 1991, Armenian troops murdered 12 and wounded 15 Azerbaijanis in Khojavand District's Garadaghli and Asgaran District's Meshali villages.

Armenian military detachments bombed buses on the Shusha-Jamilli, Aghdam-Khojavand, and Aghdam-Garadaghli routes in August and September of the same year, killing 17 Azerbaijanis and injuring over 90 others.

In October and November 1991, Armenians burned, destroyed, and plundered over 30 settlements in the mountainous area of Karabakh, including Tugh, Imarat-Garvand, Sirkhavand, Meshali, Jamilli, Umudlu, Garadaghli, Karkijahan, and other significant villages.

Many of the Armenia-committed massacres on Azerbaijan's formerly occupied territories meet entirely the requirements of the Genocide Convention, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948.

About 4,000 Azerbaijanis went missing as a result of the first Karabakh war and Armenia has yet to present Azerbaijan with details about their whereabouts. 

To recap, Dashbashi village was among 300 villages liberated from Armenian occupation during the second Karabakh war with Armenia in 2020. 

A Moscow-brokered ceasefire deal that Baku and Yerevan signed on November 10, 2020, brought an end to six weeks of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani army declared a victory against the Armenian troops. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it had occupied since the early 1990s. The agreement stipulated the return of Azerbaijan's Armenian-occupied Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions. Before the signing of the deal, the Azerbaijani army had liberated around 300 villages, settlements, city centres, and historic Shusha city.