Ethnic War in the Caucasus Finds New Depths of Carnage.

By Francis x. Clines

Special to The New York Times

AGDAM, Azerbaijan, March 5 – As Hadjiyev Hakhverdy washes the corpses of gunshot children and mutilated adults here at the valley mosque, all the despair and defeat of Azerbaijan seems at hand in his ministrations after four years of undeclared war with Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“I have cleaned 200 since Feb.26,” said the mosque worker, aghast as he wrapped for burial another decapitated male corpse fresh from the war between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, which appears to be setting new standards for carnage and vendetta. “Some are so broken, but we must bury them.”

Azerbaijan appears to be losing the communal war as Nagorno-Karabakh boils over once again and the Armenian majority in the enclave continues to prevail in its campaign to wrest total self-government from Azerbaijan.

Government Collapses

The Azerbaijan Government in Baku was in a state of collapse this week because of the public’s outrage over its inability to protect the scores of Azerbaijanis killed in an Armenian guerrilla attack on Khojaly, a city 10 miles southwest of here deferring control of the airport for the enclave’s capital, Stepanakert.

[Ayaz Mutalibov, President of Azerbaijan, resigned Friday under criticism of his ability to control the violence in Nagorno-Karabakh.]

Survivors who crawled through the woods to this town just outside the enclave told of tank barrages, families destroyed by point-blank gunfire of looting, rape and hostage-taking. This is a plague of terrors heard as well from assaulted Armenian villages, but lately with heightened death tolls and heavier military assaults.

“We are defeated now,” said Elshad Gulayev, an Azerbaijan nationalist guerrilla who roams the front line of Azerbaijan villages surrounding the enclave, where tank, rocket and artillery barrages have become common-

Continued on page 20, column 3

Publication date 03/08/1992

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform.