Photojournalist: Photos may help people find relatives’ graves in Aghdam PHOTO

Well-known Iranian-French photojournalist Reza Deghati has said that he went to Azerbaijan’s Aghdam city to make a report on the Khojaly tragedy of 1992.

“It was a real tragedy. The corpses were brought to the Aghdam mosque, where they were washed. As the Armenians were shelling the Aghdam cemetery, the bodies of the victims were buried in the park in memory of those killed in the war of 1941-1945. It was a heartbreaking moment,” Deghati told Azertag.

Years after the first war in Karabakh, Deghati again visited Aghdam after the victory in the 44-day Second Karabakh War.

“I went to the area where I was filming in Aghdam. All the graves were destroyed, and I did not find anything as if there was no cemetery in this place. I saw that people are looking for the graves of their relatives. One of the photographs I took caught my attention,” he said.

“The place in the photo seemed familiar to me. When I went to Paris, I looked in my archives and found a photo I took in the same place in 1992. I knew that the deserted place that I saw in Aghdam, where neither a tree nor graves were left, was the alley where the martyrs were buried,” the photojournalist said.

Noting that he was greatly concerned by the incident he witnessed in the Alley of Martyrs in Aghdam, the famous photographer recalls this as one of the difficult moments he faced.

“I witnessed a very sad scene. An elderly man with a shovel in his hands was looking for something on the Alley of Martyrs in Aghdam. While pointing to the place, he said that this is the same place. I asked what he meant. I was told that his son was a martyr and he came to find his son's grave. He put a stone around the grave. I asked that there is nothing here, how did you find the grave? His answer still haunts my soul. He said that he had buried himself his son here,” Deghati said.

The photographer hopes that people will find the graves of their relatives thanks to the photo taken in 1992.

“There is nothing left on the Alley of Martyrs in Aghdam, all the graves have been destroyed. I would like the photos that I took here during that period to be published on all websites and to be shown on TV channels. Let people look and find the burial place of their relatives. The photos I take can help people find the graves of their relatives,” he added.

Both martyrs of the Karabakh war and civilians brutally killed by Armenians during the Khojaly tragedy were buried in the Alley of Martyrs in Aghdam. The grave of Azerbaijani National Hero Allahverdi Baghirov is also here.

The Armenian vandals, who destroyed everything in Aghdam during the occupation, also annihilated the Alley of Martyrs by digging up the graves. After Aghdam was liberated from occupation, people have been trying to find the graves of their relatives in the Alley of Martyrs. However, it is often impossible.