Упрощенная HTML-версия
SHELLING IN TOWN
REPORTED
The Azerbaijani press agency Azerinform reported
fresh Armenian missile fire on the Azerbaijani-pop-
ulated town of Shusha in Nagorno-Karabakh on Sun-
day night. It said several people had been wounded
in another attack, on the settlement of Venjali, early
today.
The Republic of Armenia reiterated denials that its
militants had killed 1,000 people in the Azerbaija-
ni-populated town of Khojaly last week and had mas-
sacred men, women and children fleeing the carnage
across snow-covered mountain passes.
But dozens of bodies scattered over the area lent cre-
dence to Azerbaijani reports of a massacre.
Azerbaijani officials and journalists who flew brief-
ly to the region by helicopter brought back three
dead children with the backs of their heads blown
off. They said shooting by Armenians had prevented
them from retrieving more bodies.
“Women and children had been scalped”, said Assad
Faradzhev, an aide to Nagorno-Karabakh’s Azerbai-
jani Governor. “When we began to pick up bodies,
they began firing at us”.
The Azerbaijani militia chief in Aghdam, Rashid Ma-
medov, said: “The bodies are lying there like flocks
of sheep. Even the fascists did nothing like this”.
TWO TRUCKS FILLED
WITH BODIES
Near Aghdam on the outskirts of Nagorno-Karabakh,
a Reuters photographer, Frederique Lengaigne, said
she had seen two trucks filled with Azerbaijani bod-
ies.
“In the first one I counted 35, and it looked as though
there were almost as many in the second”, she said.
“Some had their heads cut off, and many had been
burned. They were all men, and a few had been wear-
ing khaki uniforms”.
Ethnic violence and economic crisis threaten to tear
apart the Commonwealth of Independent States,
created by 11 former Soviet republics in December.
The commonwealth has been powerless in the face
of the ethnic hatred rekindled in the age-old dispute
between Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan,
which are members.
Four years of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh have
killed 1,500 to 2,000 people. The last week’s fighting
has been the most savage yet.
The 366th Regiment, based in Stepanakert, the capi-
tal of Nagorno-Karabakh, has been caught at the cen-
ter of fighting in which at least three of its soldiers
were killed late last month.
Speaking to his Parliament in Yerevan, the Armenian
capital, President Levon Ter-Petrosyan criticized the
withdrawal from the enclave of the commonwealth’s
last troops.
“This regiment, though not involved in military op-
erations, was a stabilizing factor”, Mr. Ter-Petrosyan
said.
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KHOJALY GENOCIDE