Deputy FM: Azerbaijan seeks global recognition of Khojaly tragedy as genocide

Azerbaijan Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov has said that is working to have the Khojaly tragedy recognized by the international community as genocide.

“We are trying to ensure that the perpetrators of the Khojaly genocide will be brought before an international court,” Azertag quotes Khalafov as saying.

“We still have not been able to bring the perpetrators of the Khojaly genocide to justice. Armenian terrorists and the 336th Motorized Rifle Regiment of the former USSR committed this crime. [former Armenian president] Serzh Sargsyan admitted that they committed this crime as an act of ethnic cleansing against the Azerbaijani people,” the senior diplomat said.

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

A slew of others preceded this heinous act. Armenians set fire to around 20 buildings in the Baghanis-Ayrim village of the Gazakh district, 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 the Khojavand district's Garadaghli and Asgaran region'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.