Svoboda, 12 June 1992
A report by Memorial, the Moscow-based human rights group, on the massive violations of human rights committed in the taking of Khojaly on the night of 25-26 February 1992 by armed units
The report of Memorial on the massive violations of human rights committed in the taking of Khojaly says of the civilians’ flight from the town: “The fugitives fell into ambushes set by the Armenians and came under fire. Some of them nonetheless managed to get into Aghdam; others, mostly women and children (exactly how many it is impossible to say), froze to death while lost in the mountains; others still, according to testimony from those who reached Aghdam, were taken prisoner near the villages of Pirdzhamal and Nakhichevanik. There is evidence from inhabitants of Khojaly who have already been exchanged that some of the prisoners were shot. Around 200 bodies were brought into Aghdam in the space of four days. Scores of the corpses bore traces of profanation. Doctors on a hospital train in Aghdam noted no less than four corpses that had been scalped and one that had been beheaded. State forensic examinations were carried out in Aghdam on 181 corpses (130 male and 51 female, including 13 children): the findings were that 151 people had died from gunshot wounds, 20 from shrapnel wounds and 10 from blows inflicted with a blunt instrument. The records of the hospital train in Aghdam, through which almost all the injured inhabitants or defenders of Khojaly passed, refer to 598 cases of wounds or frostbite (cases of frostbite being in the majority) and one case of live scalping”.