Azerbaijan resettles over 100 IDPs in Khojaly’s Ballija village after 32 years

A new group of internally displaced people (IDPs) has been relocated to Ballija village in Azerbaijan’s Khojaly district.

Some 21 families, totaling 119 people, are planned to be resettled in Ballija on December 27. For the first time in 32 years, these former IDPs will celebrate the holidays on their ancestral land, Caliber.Az reports per local media.

Ballija village has been under Armenian occupation since 1992. It was liberated during the one-day local anti-terrorist operation conducted on September 19-20, 2023 by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces to neutralise illegal Armenian armed formations and their military infrastructure in the Karabakh region.

The resettlement comes after a prolonged period of hardship for Khojaly, which was occupied on the night of February 25-26, 1992, during a tumultuous period in the region's history. The occupation was marked by the tragic events of the Khojaly genocide, where Armenian forces committed atrocities against Azerbaijani civilians. During the attack on Khojaly, the Armenian armed forces killed 613 ethnic Azerbaijanis, including 106 women, 63 children, and 70 elderly people.

They took 1,275 as hostages. Some 150 Azerbaijani nationals went missing, and their fates remain unknown to this day. Those suffering major injuries totalled 487, including 76 children. The bloodshed facilitated Khojaly’s invasion, which fell under Armenia’s occupation on February 26, 1992.

By Naila Huseynova