By Viktoria Ivleva

“I joined the group of doctors who followed the second line of attackers. Several kilometres short of Khodzhaly we saw in the darkness a nebulous mass moving towards us. We could hear moans, shouts and curses in Azerbaijani and Armenian. The stirring mass proved to be a crowd of barely clad people, including many children…”

CASUALTIES AND REFUGEES

An eye-witness account

I arrived in Stepanakert to shoot a report on February 26.I got there just in time; that night Armenian units were storming the village of Khodzhaly from where Azerbaijanian forces shelled Stepanakert and where the enclave’s only airport is located.

I joined the group of doctors who followed the second line of attackers. Several kilometres short of Khodzhaly we saw in the darkness a nebulous mass moving towards us. We could hear moans, shouts and curses in Azerbaijani and Armenian. The stirring mass proved to be a crowd of barely clad people, including many children.

“They are Meskhetian Turks that we have taken prisoner,” said the Armenian troops guarding them.

At the rear of the column was a woman with three kids. She walked with difficulty through the snow barefoot and fell often. I found out her youngest child was a two-day old infant.

I carried the baby and joined the Turks on their march. I wept bitterly together with that woman. It was night and everything was in confusion. Despite the distinct markings on my clothes denoting as one of the storming troops, they hit me twice with rifle butts and cursed at me, prodding me forward. I knew I was safe, but I momentarily understood what a prisoner experiences. I wouldn’t want anyone to be one.

In the morning I was in the village. It had been burnt down. There were bodies in the streets. I counted seven. One wore the police uniform. Walking in the streets we came under automatic fire. The bursts came from Azerbaijanian OMON snipers hiding in one house. Fighting outside that house went on till evening and cost the Armenians two casualties and eleven wounded. I don’t know what happened to the OMON troopers—whether they died or managed to escape in the gathering darkness.

I didn’t see any men of the 366th motor rifle regiment during the storming of Khodzhaly, but I did see some armoured vehicles and artillery shelling prior to the storming.

The Turks were released two days later. They were taken to the frontline in the Askeran District and told to get going. Only ten Turkish men were detained as hostages. According to Armenians, they were of no great use: they couldn’t even get a can of gas in exchange for the hostages. No one want them, they belong to no one. The men guarding the Turks treated them decently. The woman who cared the most for them was Zhanna Galstyan, one of the Karabakh resistance movement leaders. She saw to it that the prisoners were fed and given water and she even brought some clothing for the children. Karabakh Armenians must be aware that the Turks’ plight is similar to their own present position.

The capture of the Turks was the most awful thing I saw In Khodzhaly. They are the people who fled Uzbekistan three years ago and were sent by the Azerbaijanian authorities to live in Nagorny Karabakh in the midst of a crisis there. Some of their old women must remember their deportation from Georgia in 1944. Now they are being expelled for a third time. Will It be the last time?

Publication date 03/15/1992

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform