Victims
The Khojaly Massacre was described by Human Rights Watch as "the largest massacre to date in the conflict" over Nagorno-Karabakh. Memorial, the Moscow-based human rights group, stated in their report that the mass killing of civilians in Khojaly could not be justified under any circumstances and that actions of Armenian militants were in gross violation of a number of basic international human rights conventions. However, Human Rights Watch also made clear, that all sides have committed violations of the rules of war and added that “both sides shelled each other's cities and towns and committed atrocities.“ Estimating the number of the civilians killed in the massacre, Human Rights Watch stated that "there are no exact figures for the number of Azeri civilians killed because Karabakh Armenian forces gained control of the area after the massacre". A 1993 report by Human Rights Watch put the number of deaths at least 161, although later reports state the number of deaths as at least 200. According to Human Rights Watch, "while it is widely accepted that 200 Azeris were murdered, as many as 500-1,000 may have died".
Memorial stated that by 28 March 1992 over 700 captive civilians from Khojaly, mostly woman and children detained both in the city and on their way to Aghdam, were delivered to the Azerbaijani side.
According to Dana Mazalova, who spoke about this issue on a press conference, the images that Chingiz Mustafayev had shown her, "have nothing in common with the videos and photographs, which the Azerbaijani side presents to the world". Mazalova claims to have seen the original footage shot by the Azerbaijani cameraman Chingiz Mustafiev of the dead bodies and says that she did not see there the signs of mutilation that were in later footage. That has the grisly implication that someone interfered with the corpses afterwards.
Armenian news agencies claim that the Azerbaijani side regularly presents pictures of victims of other wars, such as the Kosovo War from 1998/1999, Afghanistan, earthquake victims or refugees from other regions as "Azerbaijani victims of the Khojaly massacre". According to the Azerbaijani mass media, the Armenian side regularly present images of victims of the Khojaly massacre as "Armenian victims of Baku Pogrom, Sumgait pogrom, Armenian genocide", etc.
Read more about this topic: Khojaly Massacre
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