CORPSES LITTER HILLS IN KARABAKH
(ANATOL LIEVEN COMES UNDER FIRE WHILE FLYING TO INVESTIGATE THE MASS KILLINGS OF REFUGEES BY ARMENIAN TROOPS)
The Times, 2 March 1992
As we swooped low over the snow-covered hills of Nagorno-Karabagh we saw the scattered corpses. Apparently, the refugees had been shot down as they ran. An Azerbaijani film of the places we flew over, shown to journalists afterwards, showed DOZENS OF CORPSES lying in various parts of the hills.
The Azerbaijanis claim that AS MANY AS 1000 have died in a MASS KILLING of AZERBAIJANIS fleeing from the town of Khodjaly, seized by Armenians last week. A further 4,000 are believed to be wounded, frozen to death or missing.
The civilian helicopter's job was to land in the mountains and pick up bodies at sites of the mass killings.
The civilian helicopter picked up four corpses, and it was during this and a previous mission that an Azerbaijani cameraman filmed the several dozen bodies on the hillsides.
Back at the airfield in Agdam, we took a look at the bodies the civilian helicopter had picked up. Two old men a small girl were covered with blood, their limbs contorted by the cold and rigor mortis. They had been shot.
MASSACRE IN KHOJALY
TIME, March 16, 1992
By Jill SMOLOWE
-Reported by Yuri ZARAKHOVICH/Moscow
While the details are argued, this much is plain: something grim and unconscionable happened in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly two weeks ago. So far, some 200 dead Azerbaijanis, many of them mutilated, have been transported out of the town tucked inside the Armenian-dominated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh for burial in neighboring Azerbaijan. The total number of deaths - the Azerbaijanis claim 1,324 civilians have been slaughtered, most of them women and children - is unknown.
Videotapes circulated by the Azerbaijanis include images of defaced civilians, some of them scalped, others shot in the head.
BBC1 Morning News at 07.37, Tuesday 3 March 1992
"BBC reporter was live on line and he claimed that he saw more than 100 bodies of Azeri men, women and children as well as a baby who are shot dead from their heads from a very short distance."
BBC1 Morning News at 08:12, Tuesday 3 March 1992
"Very disturbing picture has shown that many civilian corpses who were picked up from mountain. Reporter said he, cameraman and Western Journalists have seen more than 100 corpses, who are men, women, children, massacred by Armenians. They have been shot dead from their heads as close as 1 meter. Picture also has shown nearly ten bodies (mainly women and children) are shot dead from their heads. Azerbaijan claimed that more than 1000 civilians massacred by Armenian forces."
Channel 4 News at 19.00, Monday 2 March 1992
"2 French journalists have seen 32 corpses of men, women and children in civilian clothes. Many of them shot dead from their heads as close as less than 1 meter."
THE FACE OF A MASSACRE
Newsweek 16 March 1992
By Pascal Privat with Steve Le Vine in Moscow
"Azerbaijan was a charnel house again last week: a place of mourning refugees and dozens of mangled corpses dragged to a makeshift morgue behind the mosque. They were ordinary Azerbaijani men, women and children of Khojaly, a small village in war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh overrun by Armenian forces on Feb. 25-26. Many were killed at close range while trying to flee; some had their faces mutilated, others were scalped. While the victims' families mourned,"
Photo: `We will never forgive the Armenians': Azeri woman mourn a victim.
Report from Karabakpress
A merciless massacre of the civilian population of the small Azeri town of Khojali (Population 6000) in Karabagh, Azerbaijan, is reported to have taken place on the night of February 28 by the Soviet Armenian Army. Close to 1000 people are reported to have been massacred. Elderly and children were not spared. Many were badly beaten and shot at close range. A sense of rage and helplessness has overwhelmed the Azeri population in face of the well armed and equipped Armenian Army. The neighboring Azeri city of Aghdam outside of the Karabagh region has come under heavy Armenian artillery shelling. City hospital was hit and two pregnant women as well as a new born infant were killed. Azerbaijan is appealing to the international community to condemn such barbaric and ruthless attacks on its population and its sovereignty.
