NYT photographer shares photo report on rocket attack on Barda

The New York Times’ photojournalist Ivor Prickett has shared photos taken in Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh War in 2020 on his Instagram account.

“I also finally got around to putting an edit from Azerbaijan, during the 2020 Karabakh war, up on my site. Why it took so long, it's been a busy time since then I guess! I also realised that I have steered away from promoting this work because of the amount of abuse I got for doing it at the time. Simply documenting the story from the Azeri side was enough to invite endless hate from online trolls. The campaign went as far as to try and smear my name at The New York Times, the implication being that I had faked the pictures from a missile attack in Barda that killed over 20 people. Anyway that didn't stick but in a way it was effective in that it made me quieter about my experiences. Here I am 3 years later, happy to talk about it,” Prickett posted, Caliber.Az reports.
“In fact my colleague Carlotta Gall and I and our team were lucky to get out of that attack in Barda unscathed. We nearly drove into the middle of the cluster bomb attack. The 2nd slide here is a short excerpt from a video, shot by my brave translator Rovlan, as we cowered behind a wall surrounded by explosions. It was probably one of the scariest moments I have ever endured, partly because we had virtually no cover. I am not a religious man but I remember very clearly praying to an unknown god that day. We somehow survived the hailstorm of bomblets and immediately got to work documenting the aftermath. In the end it was the single most deadly loss of civilian life during the 2020 war, which ended some few weeks later.
I had no real political stance or opinion on the war, it was my first time working in the region. But I do know that needless wars end up killing innocent civilians on both sides of every conflict. It is simply our job to take account of that.” he noted.

Armenian missile attacks on the densely populated areas of Azerbaijan's Barda district with the use of prohibited weapons in October, 2020 killed 25 civilians and injured more than 80.