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www.justiceforkhojaly.org
Dozens of bodies lay scattered around the killing
fields of Nagorno-Karabakh yesterday, evidence of
the worst massacre in four years of fighting over the
disputed territory.
Azeri officials who returned from the scene to this
town about nine miles away brought back three dead
children, the backs of their heads blown off.
At the local mosque, six other bodies lay stretched
out, fully clothed, with their limbs frozen in the po-
sitions in which they were killed. Their faces were
black from the cold.
“Telman!” screamed one woman, beating her breast
furiously over the body of her dead father, who lay
on his back with his stiff right arm jutting into the air.
Those who returned from a brief visit by helicopter
to Khojaly, captured by the Armenians last week,
said they had seen similar sights - only more. One
Russian journalist said he had counted about 30 bod-
ies within a radius of 50 yards from where the heli-
copter landed.
Armenia has denied atrocities or mass killings of
Azeris after its well-armed irregulars captured
Khojaly, the second-biggest Azeri town in Na-
gorno-Karabakh, last Wednesday. Azerbaijan says
1,000 people were killed.
“Women and children had been scalped”, said Assad
Faradzhev, an aide to Karabakh’s Azeri governor.
Mr. Faradzhev said the helicopter, bearing Red
Cross markings and escorted by two MI-24 helicop-
ters of the former Soviet army, succeeded in picking
up only the three children before Armenian militants
opened fire. “When we began to pick up bodies, they
started firing at us”, he said.
Mr. Faradzhev said they were on the ground for only
15 minutes.
“The combat helicopters fired red flares to signal
that Armenians were approaching and it was time
to leave. I was ready to blow myself up if we were
captured”, he said pointing to a grenade in his coat
pocket.
Reuters photographer Frederique Lengaigne saw
two trucks full of Azeri corpses near Aghdam.
“In the first one, I counted 35, and it looked as though
there were almost as many in the second. Some had
their heads cut off and many had been burned. They
were all men, and a few had been wearing khaki uni-
forms”, she said.
By Brian Killen, Aghdam, Azerbaijan
The Washington Times, 3 March 1992,
“Atrocity reports horrify Azerbaijan”