Azerbaijan: Mass grave found in liberated Aghdam

A mass grave has been found on the territory of the liberated Aghdam district.

The burial was found in the liberated Agdam district’s Sarijali village, near the Aghdam-Hindarkh road, Report informs, citing the deputy head of the working group of the State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Citizens Eldar Samadov.

It should be noted that earlier a mass grave was found in Shusha in the courtyard of the Shusha prison.

During the inspection of the territory where the skeletons were found, parts of a military truck were found.

Presumably, during the first Karabakh war, four people who were in this car were killed, and the bodies were thrown into a well and buried.

The Aghdam district prosecutor's office is investigating the case.

To recap, in general, more than 400 human remains have been found in the mass graves identified so far.

Armenia and Azerbaijan had been locked in a decades-old armed conflict over the latter’s Karabakh (Garabagh) region. Following the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Armenia launched full-blown military aggression against Azerbaijan, marking the longest and deadliest war in the South Caucasus region. The bloody war ended with a ceasefire in 1994, which saw Armenia forcibly occupying 20 per cent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories. Over 30,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 3,890 went missing, and one million others were expelled from those lands in a brutal ethnic cleansing policy conducted by Armenia.

In early April 2023, Azerbaijan published the list of mass grave sites in the direction of Fuzuli Distric’s Yukhari Seyidahmadli, Ashagi Seyidahmadli, Malikjanli, Yukhari Veysalli villages, in the direction of Jabrayil Dsitrict’s Darzili, Chaytumas villages, near Kalbajar District’s Baghirli, Yanshag, Qamishlig, Aghdaban villages, in the area called Buzlug mountain, on the height of Murovdag, in the territory of the city of Kalbajar, in Aghdam District’s Sugovushan, Sarijali, Garagashli, Gulluja villages, Gubadli District’s Goyyal village, in the Shusha city cemetery, Khojavand District’s Edilli village, and in the territory of Khankandi city, Khojaly and Khojavand districts, as well as the former Aghdara district, which are currently under the temporary control of Russian peacekeepers.

Armenia, which promised to cooperate with Azerbaijan to determine the fate of about 4,000 missing Azerbaijanis, still fails to return the bodies of servicemen, who went missing during the first Karabakh war in the early 1990s.

Armenia has yet to provide information about the mass graves of 3,890 missing Azerbaijani citizens (including 71 children, 267 women and 326 elderly people).