Azerbaijanis Claim 1,000 Died While Fleeing Raid in Disputed Enclave

By Thomas Goltz. Special to The Washington Post

BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 3 — Reports from refugees arriving here of a massacre by Armenian forces last week in the town of Khojaly are adding new fuel to the fiery confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The precise death toll remains uncertain, but it is clear that many people were killed in the assault, when Armenian forces attacked the Azerbaijani town in the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh. The incident was the latest explosion in the four-year-old battle between the Christian Armenians who live in Karabakh and the Muslim Azerbaijanis who administer it. The conflict already has claimed more than 1,000 lives. Azerbaijani police said today that they had recovered 120 bodies from the Khojaly area, but survivors have claimed that the death toll may be more than 1,000. Armenian officials in Moscow called the higher figure a “gross exaggeration,” according to the Associated Press.

Eyewitnesses who flew to the disaster site by Azerbaijani military helicopter spoke of seeing scores of bodies, some mutilated.

“We saw 30 bodies in the immediate vicinity of where our helicopter landed,” said freelance photographer Costa Sakellariou. “Many of those we found, including women and children, had their hands raised above their heads as if shot after having surrendered. Several were scalped.”

The mayor of Khojaly, Elman Mahmadov, gave reporters his version of what happened after arriving here. He said the attack started on the evening of Feb. 25, the anniversary of the 1989 massacre of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait, in which an estimated 31 Armenians were killed. The Armenian forces were backed by troops of the former Soviet Interior Ministry (MVD) when they attacked the town, which a few weeks ago had an estimated population of 6,000.

“They opened their barrage at around 8:30 p.m. and then attacked from three sides about two hours later,” Mahmadov said. “They wanted us to flee toward Askeron. We had no other choice.”

The alleged massacre occurred there, at the so-called “Askeron Gap,” as refugees from Khojaly tried to make their way to the city of Agdam through what survivors described as a gantlet of Armenian fire.

Like many of the survivors, Mahmadov was critical of the government of Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutalibov for not providing stronger support after Armenian militants cut off the road to Khojaly last October.

“We thought the nation was behind us,” he said. “We were deceived, utterly.”

Officials in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, have said that the assault on Khojaly followed an attack that morning by Azerbaijani soldiers, backed by tanks and several helicopters, along the road between Khojaly and Agdam. Another eyewitness account of the fighting came from Bahram Nigmatal, a draftee from Turkmenistan who had deserted the MVD forces and fled to Khojaly a few days earlier. He described the attack this way:

“It was the Armenians and our unit working together. They had a lot of armored vehicles and they overran the airport area and then attacked the town. We tried to help the women and children get out. I saw 12 of our group get killed. I don’t know how many others were killed. I saw lots of bodies.”

The majority of those killed in Khojaly appear to have been members of a group known as the Meskhetian Turks, or Ahiska, who had been relocated to Khojaly after being evicted from Uzbekistan in 1989 during ethnic violence there. Whatever order existed in the column of refugees broke down when the leader of the Khojaly garrison, Maj. Alef Hadiev, was shot through the head by a high-caliber machine gun mounted on a Soviet armored personnel carrier. With him fell at least 30 soldiers and 19 airport guards, leaving the column virtually defenseless.

“We arrived in the middle of the Askeron Gap near a town called Nakhichivanik around dawn, and the Armenians were there waiting for us,” said Asif Usubov, one of the few surviving Azerbaijani militiamen. “They were on the ridges and just started shooting down in the gorge.”

Mutalibov’s government, which had been seeking a negotiated settlement of the Karabakh crisis, has been rocked by the incident, in part because it initially denied that a mass killing had taken place.

The official presidential spokesman at first reported that only two people were killed and that Khojaly was still in Azerbaijani hands. The government also refused to airlift the wounded out of the packed hospital wards in Agdam in case any of the wounded were seen in Baku and word of the disaster spread throughout the country.

“We had to lie. We had to,” a government official in Agdam said. “If the people knew the extent of the tragedy, they would take out their rage on the government because they are unable to get to the Armenians.”

“We have been sold out by the government,” wailed one woman at the chaotic hospital in Agdam, who had lost all her family. “They allow us to die like dogs, and then they lie about it.”

In Agdam, Azerbaijan, mourners grieve for a man they say was killed fleeing an attack last week by Armenian forces on the town of Khojaly. (Photo AFP)

Publication date 03/04/1992

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform