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55
KHOJALY GENOCIDE
In Aghdam’s mosque, the dead bodies lay on mat-
tresses under a naked light bulb. People screamed
insults at Azerbaijan’s president, Ayaz Mutalibov,
saying he had not done enough to protect Karabakh’s
Azeri population.
Hundreds of people crowded outside chanting Is-
lamic prayers. Some wept uncontrollably and col-
lapsed near their dead relatives, brought to the town
by truck only minutes earlier.
Chilling film of dozens of stiffened corpses scattered
over a snowy hillside backed accounts of the slaugh-
ter of women and children sobbed out by refugees
who made it safely out of the disputed Caucasus en-
clave.
Azerbaijani television showed pictures of one truck-
load of bodies brought to the Azeri town of Aghdam,
some with their faces apparently scratched with
knives or their eyes gouged out. One little girl had
her arms stretched out as if crying for help.
“The bodies are lying there like flocks of sheep.
Even the fascists did nothing like this”, said Agh-
dam militia commander Rashid Mamedov, referring
to the Nazi invaders in World War II.
“Give us help to bring back the bodies and show
people what happened”, Karabakh Gov. Musa Ma-
medov pleaded by telephone to the Soviet army base
in Gyandzha, Azerbaijan’s second-largest city.
A helicopter pilot who took cameramen and Western
correspondents over the area reported seeing some
corpses lying around Khojaly and dozens more near
the Askeran Gap, a mountain pass only a few miles
from Aghdam.
A local truce was enforced to allow the Azerbaijanis
to collect their dead and any refugees still hiding in
the hills and forest. All are the bodies of ordinary
people, dressed in the poor, ugly clothing of work-
ers. All the rest were civilians, including eight wom-
en and three small children. Two groups, apparently
families, had fallen together, the children cradled in
the women’s arms. Several of them, including one
small girl, had terrible head injuries: only her face
was left. Survivors have told how they saw Arme-
nians shooting them point blank as they lay on the
ground.
The Times, 3 March 1992,
“Bodies mark site of Karabakh massacre”