By Ruslan Rehimov

BAKU, Azerbaijan

Azerbaijanis on Saturday marched to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 March genocide, committed by Armenian forces jointly with Bolsheviks against Azerbaijanis.

March 31 is commemorated in Azerbaijan as the Day of Genocide, in which tens of thousands of civilians lost their lives in the country’s Guba province in 1918.

Azerbaijanis, led by Ali Hasanov, the president's assistant for public and political affairs, as well as other senior government officials, marched to the Guba Genocide Memorial Complex.

Chanting slogans against Armenian terrorism, the crowd prayed for the victims.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry also issued a declaration for the day condemning Armenia's aggressive attitude.

Citing the 1,000-plus victims of the 1992 Khojaly Massacre, the declaration said Armenia is continuing its massacres to this day.

The ministry also urged the international community to do serious political and legal assessment of Armenia's crimes against humanity.

The Khojaly Massacre is seen as one of the bloodiest and most controversial incidents of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan for control of the now-occupied Nagorno Karabakh region.

On Feb. 26, 1992, on the heels of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Armenian forces took over the town of Khojaly in Karabakh after battering it with heavy artillery and tanks, assisted by an infantry regiment.

The two-hour offensive killed 613 Azeri citizens, including 116 women and 63 children, and critically injured 487 others, according to Azerbaijani figures. One hundred and fifty of the 1,275 Azerbaijanis that the Armenians captured during the massacre remain missing.