BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 26. The night from
February 25-26, 1992, went down in history as one of the bloodiest
pages in Azerbaijani history, the political analyst Azer Garayev
told Trend.


According to him, this was one of the darkest pages not only in
Azerbaijani history, but also in world history.


He stated that Armenian military forces committed operations and
crimes against humanity intended to virtually wipe Khojaly off the
face of the earth in a matter of hours. As a result, one of the
bloodiest genocides in world history - the Khojaly genocide -
occurred.


During the killings, 613 people were brutally murdered,
including 63 children, 106 women, and 70 elderly persons. A total
of 487 people sustained injuries of varying degrees, 1,275 were
taken captive and subjected to torture, eight families were
annihilated, 130 children lost one parent, and 25 lost both
parents. All these figures are separate panels of a horrific
genocide. These numbers are not merely statistics — they are
evidence of the systematic destruction of a city.


Garayev noted that what happened in Khojaly wasn't an accidental
military clash.


As a result of this act, civilians attempting to leave Khojaly
came under fire, non-combatants were killed with particular
brutality, and violence was committed against the bodies. All of
the acts are a gross violation of international humanitarian law.
Throughout history, crimes against humanity have taken place on
different scales. For example, the Holocaust — the systematic
extermination of millions of people — is considered the largest
genocide of the 20th century. The Srebrenica genocide is recognized
as the gravest mass killing in Europe since World War II.







Although the Khojaly tragedy resulted in fewer victims compared
to these events, in terms of its nature and method — as a
deliberate and ruthless attack directed against civilians — it
falls into the category of a crime against humanity. The main issue
here is not only the number of victims, but the essence of the
crime: the targeting of unarmed civilians, the killing of people
attempting to flee, and the complete annihilation of families.


The analyst pointed out that the liberation of Karabakh and
Khojaly from occupation played a major role in helping the
Azerbaijani people overcome the trauma of genocide.


"This process should be evaluated not only as a military and
political outcome, but also as, in some sense, the healing of a
collective trauma that had lasted for many years. Particularly in
the context of honoring the memory of those who lost their lives
during the Khojaly genocide, the restoration of territorial
integrity carries symbolic and moral significance in Azerbaijani
society.


The mass killing of civilians during the Khojaly tragedy was not
only the fate of a single city, but also left an indelible scar on
the nation’s memory. For many years, the lack of control over those
territories was perceived as an unresolved issue, including open
questions regarding the restoration of justice. Under the
leadership of President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham
Aliyev, the liberation of Karabakh changed the defeated spirit of
the people and society.


Today, Azerbaijan is a society that can look back at its past
and its pain with pride. Without forgetting the tragedies and
genocides committed against us, we are now a nation moving forward
into the future with great strides," Garayev concluded.