Khojaly Massacre

The Khojaly massacre was the killing of hundreds of ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojaly on 25–26 February 1992 by the Armenian and, partially, by CIS armed forces during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. According to the Azerbaijani side, as well as Memorial Human Rights Center, Human Rights Watch and other international observers, the massacre was committed by the ethnic Armenian armed forces, reportedly with help of the Russian 366th Motor Rifle Regiment, apparently not acting on orders from the command. The death toll provided by Azerbaijani authorities is 613 civilians, including 106 women and 83 children. The event became the largest massacre in the course of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Western governments and the western media refer to it as the "Khojaly massacre" or "Khojaly tragedy". Azerbaijani sources occasionally refer to the massacre as "Khojaly genocide" (Xocalı soyqırımı, Hocalı soykırımı) and the "Khojaly tragedy" (Xocalı faciəsi).

Background
During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, both Armenians and Azerbaijanis became victims of pogroms and ethnic cleansing, which resulted in numerous casualties and displacement of large groups of people. By 1992 the conflict had escalated into a full-scale war. In February 1992 the capital of Karabakh Stepanakert was under a blockade and constant bombardment by Azerbaijani forces.

The town of Khojaly was located on the road that connected Shusha and Stepanakert to Agdam and had the region's only airport. The airport was of vital importance for the survival of the population in Karabakh which had no land connection with the Republic of Armenia and was under a total blockade by Azerbaijan. According to reports from Human Rights Watch, Khojaly was used as a base for Azerbaijani forces shelling the city of Stepanakert. The indiscriminate shelling and sniper shooting killed or maimed hundreds of civilians, destroyed homes, hospitals and other objects that are not legitimate military targets, and generally terrorized the civilian population. Khojaly itself was shelled by Armenian forces almost on a daily basis during the winter of 1991–1992, and people grew accustomed to spending nights in basements. During the winter of 1992, Armenian forces went on the offensive, forcing almost the entire Azerbaijani population of the enclave to flee, and committing what HRW describes as "unconscionable acts of violence against civilians" as they fled. In 1988 the town had 2,135 inhabitants. Due to the Nagorno-Karabakh War and the population exchanges between Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as Meskhetian Turk refugees leaving Central Asia and subsequently settling in the town, this number had grown to about 6,000 by 1991.

In October 1991, the Nagorno Karabakh forces cut the road connecting Khojaly and Aghdam, so that the only way to reach the town was by a helicopter. The town was defended by local OMON forces under the command of Alif Hajiyev, which numbered about 160 or so lightly armed men. Prior to the attack, the town had been without electricity and gas for several months.

According to Memorial, from fall 1991 Khojaly was practically blockaded by the Armenian armed forces, and after the withdrawal of the Soviet Internal Troops from Karabakh the blockade became total. Some inhabitants left the blockaded town, but the full evacuation of the civilian population was not carried out, despite insistent demands of the head of executive power of Khojaly E.Mamedov.

The massacre
According to Human Rights Watch, the tragedy struck when "a large column of residents, accompanied by a few dozen retreating fighters, fled the city as it fell to Armenian forces. As they approached the border with Azerbaijan, they came across an Armenian military post and were cruelly fired upon".

According to Memorial, part of the population started to leave Khojaly soon after the assault began, trying to flee in the direction of Agdam, and there were armed people from the town's garrison among some of the fleeing groups. People left in two directions: (1) from the eastern side of the town in the north-east direction along the river, passing Askeran to their left (this specific route, according to Armenian officials, was provided as a "free corridor"); (2) from the northern side of the town in the north-east direction, passing Askeran to their right (it appears that a smaller number of refugees fled using this route). Thus, the majority of civilians left Khojaly, while around 200–300 people stayed in Khojaly, hiding in their houses and basements. As a result of the shelling of the town, an unascertained number of civilians were killed on the territory of Khojaly during the assault. The Armenian side practically refused to provide Memorial observers information about the number of people who so perished. The refugees in both groups were fired upon, as a result of which many of them were killed. Those who remained alive dispersed. Running refugees came across Armenian military posts and were fired upon. Some refugees managed to escape to Agdam, some, mainly women and children (the exact number is impossible to determine), froze to death while wandering around in mountains, some were captured near the villages of Nakhichevanik and Pirjamal.

Helsinki Watch reported that "the militia, still in uniform, and some still carrying their guns, were interspersed with the masses of civilians" and according to eyewitness accounts there was shooting between Armenian and the Azerbaijani forces which were mixed with the civilians. At the same time, Human Rights Watch and Memorial stated that the killing of civilians could not be justified under any circumstances. Human Rights Watch noted that "the attacking party [i.e., Karabakh Armenian forces] is still obliged to take precautionary measures to avoid or minimize civilian casualties. In particular, the party must suspend an attack if it becomes apparent that the attack may be expected to cause civilian casualties that are excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. The circumstances surrounding the attack at Nakhichevanik on those fleeing Khojaly indicate that Armenian forces and the troops of the 366th CIS regiment (who were not apparently acting on orders from their commanders) deliberately disregarded this customary law restraint on attacks" However, the obligation to protect the civilians was likewise breached by the Azerbaijani side. As stated by HRW report: "The parties may not use civilians to shield military targets from attack or to shield military operations including retreats. Thus a party that intersperses combatants with fleeing civilians puts those civilians at risk and violates its obligation to protect its own civilians." The Armenian side refers to Ayaz Mutalibov's interview to claim that the massacre had been committed not by Armenian soldiers but by Popular Front of Azerbaijan militants who allegedly shot their own civilians escaping through the corridor. In one of his interviews Mutalibov stated that the event was "organized" by his political opponents to force his resignation.

In later interviews, however, Mutalibov would go on to condemn the Armenians, claiming that they blatantly misinterpreted his words. He also denied ever accusing the Popular Front of Azerbaijan of having anything to do with these events saying that he only meant the PFA took advantage of the situation to focus the popular resentment on him. Mutalibov stated that after the massacre he called the speaker of the Supreme Soviet of NKAO Artur Mkrtchyan, and the latter assured him that the people of Khojaly were given a corridor to escape, and he only referred to Mkrtchyan's words, without making any assertions as to whether the corridor actually existed.

The Armenian side officially asserts that the killings occurred as a result of wartime military operations, and were caused by the prevention of the evacuation of town inhabitants by Azerbaijani forces, who shot those who attempted to flee. This explanation however is widely disputed, among others, the executive director of Human Rights Watch has stated that: "we place direct responsibility for the civilian deaths with Karabakh Armenian forces. Indeed, neither our report nor that of Memorial includes any evidence to support the argument that Azerbaijani forces obstructed the flight of, or fired on Azeri civilians". British journalist Thomas de Waal noted that "the overwhelming evidence of what happened has not stopped some Armenians, in distasteful fashion, trying to muddy the waters". However, De Waal has also stated that the tragedy in Khojaly was a result of a chaotic situation, and not a "deliberately planned" action by the Armenians.

The Committee to Protect Journalists states that the Azerbaijani journalist Chingiz Mustafayev who recorded the bodies after Khojaly Massacre was killed very suspiciously while he was reportedly trying to gather information alleging that the Armenian attack on civilians in Khojaly was a provocation by the Azerbaijani National Front to force the resignation of Azerbaijani president Ayaz Mutalibov. However according to his brother Vahid Mustafayev, Chingiz was fatally wounded while filming an exchange of fire between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces when a shell exploded right beside him and a splinter from the shell severed one of his major arteries.

At the same time, some Armenian sources admitted the guilt of the Armenian side. According to Markar Melkonian, the brother of the Armenian military leader Monte Melkonian, "Khojaly had been a strategic goal, but it had also been an act of revenge." The date of the massacre in Khojaly had a special significance: it was the run-up to the fourth anniversary of the anti-Armenian pogrom in the city of Sumgait where the civilian Armenian population was brutally murdered solely because of their ethnic origin. Melkonian particularly mentions the role of the fighters of two Armenian military detachments called the Arabo and Aramo, who stabbed to death many Azeri civilians.

According to Serzh Sargsyan, long-time Defense Minister and Chairman of Security Council of Armenia who is the current president of Armenia, "A lot was exaggerated" in the casualties, and the fleeing Azerbaijanis had put up armed resistance. At the same time he stated: "Before Khojali, the Azerbaijanis thought that they were joking with us, they thought that the Armenians were people who could not raise their hand against the civilian population. We were able to break that [stereotype]. And that's what happened. And we should also take into account that amongst those boys were people who had fled from Baku and Sumgait. Although I think that is still very much exaggerated, very much. Azerbaijanis needed an excuse to equate a place to Sumgait, but they can not be compared. Yes, in fact, was in Khojaly civilians, but along with the civilians were soldiers. [W]hen a shell is flying through the air, it doesn't distinguish between a civilian resident and a soldier; it doesn't have eyes. If the civilian population stays there, even though there was a perfect opportunity to leave, that means that they also are taking part in military operations. . ."

According to the Memorial,

The site of the mass killing of Khojaly inhabitants was filmed on videotape by Azerbaijani journalist Chingiz Mustafayev. He was accompanied by the Russian journalist Yuri Romanov during the first helicopter flight to the scene of the tragedy. Romanov described in his memoir how he looked out of the window of the helicopter and literally jumped back from an incredibly horrible view. The whole area up to the horizon was covered with dead bodies of women, elderly people and boys and girls of all ages, from newly born to teenagers. From the mass of bodies two figures caught his sight. An old woman with uncovered gray head was lying face down next to a small girl in a blue jacket. Their legs were tied with barbed wire, and the old woman's hands were tied as well. Both were shot in their heads, and the little girl in her last move was stretching out her hands to her dead grandmother. Shocked, Romanov even forgot about his camera, but after recovering from the shock started filming. However, the helicopter came under the fire, and they had to leave.

Anatol Lieven wrote in The Times after visiting the site of the massacre: "Scattered amid the withered grass and bushes along a small valley and across the hillside beyond are the bodies of last Wednesday’s massacre by Armenian forces of Azerbaijani refugees. ... Of the 31 we saw, only one policeman and two apparent national volunteers were wearing uniform. All the rest were civilians, including eight women 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 Armenians shooting them point blank as they lay on the ground."

Helen Womack reported in The Independent: "The exact number of victims is still unclear, but there can be little doubt that Azeri civilians were massacred by Armenian fighters in the snowy mountains of Nagorny Karabakh last week. Refugees from the enclave town of Khojaly, sheltering in the Azeri border town of Agdam, give largely consistent accounts of how their enemies attacked their homes on the night of 25 February, chased those who fled and shot them in the surrounding forests. Yesterday I saw 75 freshly dug graves in one cemetery in addition to four mutilated corpses we were shown in the mosque when we arrived in Agdam late on Tuesday. I also saw women and children with bullet wounds, in a makeshift hospital in a string of railway carriages at the station", "I have little doubt that on this occasion, two weeks ago, the Azeris were the victims of Armenian brutality. In the past it has been the other way round"

Another Russian journalist, Victoria Ivleva entered Khojaly after it fell to the Armenian armed forces. She took the pictures of the streets of the town strewn with dead bodies of its inhabitants, including women and children. In the article that she wrote for a Russian newspaper she described how she saw a large crowd of Meskhetian Turks from Khojaly, who were led to captivity by the Armenian militants. She mentioned that she was hit by an Armenian soldier who took her for one of the captives, when she was helping a woman who was falling behind the crowd with four children, one of which was wounded, and the other one was newly born. The captives were later exchanged or released, and in 2011 Ivleva found in Azerbaijan that woman. Her little child grew up, but did not speak because of the shock she suffered in her childhood.

The Azerbaijani journalist Eynulla Fatullayev traveled in 2005 to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and wrote an article called "Karabakh Diary". He claimed that he met some refugees from Khojaly, temporarily settled in Naftalan, who said that the Armenians had indeed left a free corridor and the Armenian soldiers positioned behind the corridor had not opened fire on them. Some soldiers from the battalions of the National Front of Azerbaijan instead, for some reason, had led part of the refugees in the direction of the village of Nakhichevanik, which during that period had been under the control of the Armenians' Askeran battalion. The other group of refugees were hit by artillery volleys while they were reaching the Agdam Region. However, in his statement to the European Court of Human Rights Fatullayev noted that in the article "The Karabakh Diary", he had merely conveyed the statements of a local Armenian, who had told Fatullayev his version of the events during the interview. Fatullayev claimed that his article did not directly accuse any Azerbaijani national of committing any crime and that in his article, there was no statement asserting that any of the Khojaly victims had been killed or mutilated by Azerbaijani fighters.

Eynulla Fatullayev was sued for defamation and convicted in an Azerbaijani court to eight and a half years in prison and a penalty fee of $230,000. "Reporters without Borders" strongly condemned this decision, stating that the judgment was based on no evidence but is purely political. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Fatullayev must be released, because in their opinion "although “The Karabakh Diary” might have contained certain exaggerated or provocative assertions, the author did not cross the limits of journalistic freedom". The Court also noted that "The Karabakh Diary" did not constitute a piece of investigative journalism focusing specifically on the Khojaly events and considered that Fatullayev's statements about these events were made rather in passing, parallel to the main theme of the article. Fatullayev was subsequently pardoned by the Azerbaijani president and released from jail.

However, after being released from prison in May 2011, Eynulla Fatullayev defended his 2005 comments which held Azerbaijani fighters and not Armenians responsible for the 1992 killings in Khojaly and added that the Azerbaijani government has long sought to use the Khojaly events to persecute its opponents, like the first president of Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutalibov, who is still under criminal investigation for complicity in the Khojaly events. He also mentions Fahmin Hajiyev, the head of Azerbaijan's interior troops of the country who spent 11 years in prison because of the Khojaly events. Hadjiyev was sentenced on charges of criminal negligence for surrendering the city of Khojaly to Armenian troops.

A Khojaly survivor, Salman Abasov told that:

Azerbaijani filmmaker Ramiz Fataliev in his interview testified that the Azerbaijani authorities did not evacuate the civilians from Khojaly because they thought that by doing so they would invite the Armenians to occupy Khojaly.

Another important fact to note is that after the seizure of Khojaly the Armenians allowed the Azerbaijanis to claim their dead, based on which the Azerbaijanis later grounded their accusations of massacre. As argued by Walker, the group committing a massacre would have hardly taken up any of these measures.

Role of the 366th CIS regiment
According to international observers, soldiers and officers of 366th regiment took part in the attack on Khojaly. Memorial called for investigation of the facts of participation of CIS soldiers in the military operations in the region and transfer of military equipment to the sides of the conflict. Soon after the massacre, in early March 1992, the regiment was withdrawn from Nagorno-Karabakh. Paratroopers evacuated the personnel of the regiment by helicopter, but over 100 soldiers and officers remained in Stepanakert and joined the Armenian forces, including the commander of the 2nd battalion major Seyran Ohanyan, who currently serves as a Minister of Defense of Armenia. Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper reported that:

Warnings and the free corridor
The report of Memorial stated that the Armenian side claimed that a free corridor was provided for fleeing civilians. The Memorial report says:

Armenian fighters claimed to HRW investigators that they sent ultimata to the Azerbaijani forces in Khojaly warning that unless missile attacks from that town on Stepanakert ceased, Armenian forces would attack. The report quotes the testimony of an Azerbaijani woman: "According to A.H., an Azerbaijani woman interviewed by Helsinki Watch in Baky, "After Armenians seized Malybeyli, they made an ultimatum to Khojaly... and that Khojaly people had better leave with white flag. Alif Gajiev [the head of the militia in Khojaly] told us this on 15 February, but this didn't frighten me or other people. We never believed they could occupy Khojaly""

Elmar Mamedov, the Mayor of Khojaly testified that the Azerbaijani authorities knew about the attack but they took no measure to evacuate the civilians:

The Memorial report quotes the words of Elmar Mamedov published in the newspaper "Russkaya Misl" (3.04.92): "We knew that this corridor was provided for the exit of the civilians..."

No witnesses interviewed by Helsinki Watch on the Azerbaijani side said that they knew beforehand of such a corridor.

Victims
The Khojaly massacre was described by Human Rights Watch as "the largest massacre to date in the conflict" over Nagorno-Karabakh. Memorial, the Moscow-based human rights group, stated in their report that actions of Armenian militants were in gross violation of a number of basic international human rights conventions. Estimating the number of the civilians killed in the massacre, Human Rights Watch stated that "there are no exact figures for the number of Azeri civilians killed because Karabakh Armenian forces gained control of the area after the massacre". A 1993 report by Human Rights Watch put the number of deaths at least 161, although later reports state the number of deaths as at least 200. According to Human Rights Watch, "while it is widely accepted that 200 Azeris were murdered, as many as 500-1,000 may have died".

Memorial stated that by 28 March 1992 over 700 captive civilians from Khojaly, mostly woman and children detained both in the city and on their way to Aghdam, were delivered to the Azerbaijani side.

According to Dana Mazalova, who spoke about this issue on a press conference, the images that Chingiz Mustafayev had shown her, "have nothing in common with the videos and photographs, which the Azerbaijani side presents to the world". Mazalova claims to have seen the original footage shot by the Azerbaijani cameraman Chingiz Mustafiev of the dead bodies and says that she did not see there the signs of mutilation that were in later footage. That has the grisly implication that someone interfered with the corpses afterwards. Mazalova also claimed that the free corridor existed and that Russian journalist Victoria Ivleva passed through it together with Meskhetian Turks and remained alive. However Ivleva said that she did not know who Mazalova was and that Mazalova was lying when she said that Ivleva walked through this corridor. In another interview Ivleva also stated that she entered the town from the opposite direction to the alleged location of the "free corridor", where Meskhetian Turks lived, and they survived because they did not walk into the "free corridor".

Armenian news agencies claim that the Azerbaijani side regularly presents pictures of victims of other wars, such as the Kosovo War from 1998/1999, Afghanistan, earthquake victims or refugees from other regions as "Azerbaijani victims of the Khojaly massacre". According to the Azerbaijani mass media, the Armenian side regularly presents images of victims of the Khojaly massacre as "Armenian victims of Baku Pogrom, Sumgait pogrom, Armenian genocide", etc.

Countries

 * 🇦🇿 - Azerbaijani Parliament recognized Khojaly Massacre
 * 🇵🇰 - Pakistan recognized Khojaly Massacre in 2012

Memorials


Khojaly Massacre was recognized and commemorated by a number of international organizations and US states, and memorials were created in various locations around the globe. Organisation of Islamic Cooperation called Khojaly events "crime against humanity" with consensus of all members and recognized it as genocide.

Khojaly massacre was recognized and commemorated at various levels in a number of US states, including the states of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, Georgia, Maine, New Mexico, Arkansas,  Oklahoma, Tennessee,  West Virginia, Connecticut  and Florida.

On May 30, 2011 Khojaly Massacre Memorial was erected in Berlin.

Representation in culture
The critically acclaimed and multiple award-nominated footage of Chingiz Mustafayev greatly increased the awareness of the campaign. The footage of the event was also broadcast by American television channel CNN.

Documentary films

 * 2011 – Refugee: a long journey of Anar Yusubov (dir. Cem Oguz)
 * 2012 – Infinite Corridor / Sonu olmayan dəhliz (dir. Richardas Lopaitis)
 * 2012 – Between hunger and fire: Power at the expense of lives. (in English)

Fictional films

 * 1993 – Fəryad (dir. Jeyhun Mirzayev)
 * 1993 – Haray (dir. Oruj Gurbanov)
 * 2012 – Xoca (dir. Vahid Mustafayev)
 * 2012 – Dolu (dir. Elkhan Jafarov)

Music
A list of musical works dedicated to the Khojaly Massacre and related events:

Non-partisan

 * CNN International: Capturing war and revolution
 * Report of Memorial Human rights center (In Russian)
 * Bloodshed in the Caucasus: escalation of the armed conflict in Nagorno Karabakh. Human Rights Watch, 1992. ISBN 1-56432-081-2, ISBN 978-1-56432-081-0
 * Thomas De Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, NYU Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8147-1945-7. Chapter 11. August 1991 – May 1992: War Breaks Out. Online (In Russian):
 * Victoria Ivleva. The corpses of people killed during the Armenian attack in the streets of the settlement of Khojaly, Nagorno-Karabakh, February 1992. Photograph 1, Photograph 2
 * Walker J. Christopher (1996) The Armenian presence in mountainous Karabakh. In Wright F. R. John, Goldenberg Suzanne and Schofield Richard (eds.) Transcaucasian boundaries. London: UCL Press, pp. 89-111

From an Azerbaijani perspective

 * Khojaly Chronicle,facts,events
 * Letter to the UN from Azerbaijan condemning the events
 * Letter of UN Human rights center
 * Justice for Khojaly, ICYF-DC campaign

From an Armenian perspective

 * The chronicle of unseen forgery and falsification
 * Letter to the UN from Armenia in response to Azeri accusations
 * Office of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, Washington DC, faq on Khojali
 * Karabakh Records