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KHOJALY GENOCIDE
Aref Sadikov sat quietly in the shade of a cafe-bar on
the Caspian Sea esplanade of Baku and showed a line
of stitches in his trousers, torn by an Armenian bullet
as he fled the town of Hojali just over three months
ago, writes Hugh Pope.
“I’m still wearing the same clothes, I don’t have any
others”, the 51-years-old carpenter said, beginning his
account of the Hojali disaster. “I was wounded in five
places, but I am lucky to be alive”.
Mr. Sadikov and his wife were short of food, without
electricity for more than a month, and cut off from he-
licopter flights for 12 days. They sensed the Armenian
noose was tightening around the 2,000 to 3,000 people
left in the straggling Azeri town on the edge of Kara-
bakh.
“At about 11pm a bombardment started such as we had
never heard before, eight or nine kinds of weapons, ar-
tillery, heavy machine-guns, the lot”, Mr. Sadikov said.
Soon neighbours were pouring down the street from
the direction of the attack. Some huddled in shelters but
others started fleeing the town, down a hill, through a
stream and through the snow into a forest on the other
side.
To escape, the townspeople had to reach the Azeri
town of Aghdam about 15 miles away. They thought
they were going to make it, until at about dawn they
reached a bottleneck between the twoAzeri villages of
Nakhchivanik and Saderak.
“None of my group was hurt up to then... Then we
were spotted by a car on the road, and the Armenian
outposts started opening fire”, Mr. Sadikov said. Mr.
Sadikov said only 10 people from his group of 80
made it through, including his wife and militiaman
son. Seven of his immediate relations died, including
his 67-years-old elder brother.
“I only had time to reach down and cover his face with
his hat”, he said, pulling his own big flat Turkish cap
over his eyes. “We have never got any of the bodies
back”.
The first groups were lucky to have the benefit of cov-
ering fire. One hero of the evacuation, Alif Hajief, was
shot dead as he struggled to change a magazine while
covering the third group’s crossing, Mr Sadikov said.
Another hero, Elman Memmedov, the mayor of Ho-
jali, said he and several others spent the whole day of
26 February in the bushy hillside, surrounded by dead
bodies as they tried to keep three Armenian armoured
personnel carriers at bay.
As the survivors staggered the last mile into Aghdam,
there was little comfort in a town from which most of
the population was soon to flee.
“The night after we reached the town there was a big
Armenian rocket attack. Some people just kept going”,
Mr. Sadikov said. “I had to get to the hospital for treat-
ment. I was in a bad way. They even found a bullet in
my sock”.
By Frederique Lengaigne
The Independent, 12 June 1992