Khojaly Massacre

"About 1,000 of Khojaly`s 10,000 people were massacred by the Armenian Army in Tuesdays attack. Azerbaijani television showed truckloads of corpses being evacuated from the Khocaly area."

"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."

"At about 11:00 p.m. the night before, some 2,000 Armenian fighters had advanced through the high grass on three sides of Khojalu, forcing the residents out through the open side to the east. By the morning of February 26, the refugees had made it to the eastern cusp of Mountainous Karabagh and had begun working their way downhill, toward safety in the Azeri city of Agdam, about six miles away. There, in the hillocks and within sight of safety, Mountainous Karabagh soldiers had chased them down. "They just shot and shot and shot, " a refugee woman, Raisha Aslanova, testified to a Human Rights Watch investigator. The Arabo fighters had then unsheathed the knives they had carried on their hips for so long, and began stabbing."

"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."

"The event in Khojaly was organized by the political opponents to force my resignation. I found it doubtful that the Armenians would have allowed the Azerbaijanis to collect the bodies had the allegations of a massacre been true."

"The city and its inhabitants were deliberately sacrificed to the political goal – to prevent the People Front of Azerbaijan from coming to power."

"I am well aware of who had the Khojaly tragedy on their conscience. And it was not the Armenian side."

"The tragedy was realized by the authorities of Azerbaijan, and concretely – somebody of those high standing."

"January events of 1990 in Baku and events in Khojalu were the handwork of the same people."

"In reality, the Khojali tragedy is one of the greatest human atrocities of the 20th century. Every effort must be made to seek the world community's unbiased and resolute position regarding this genocide."