BAKU

Residents and officials gathered in Ganja on Monday to honor people killed in Armenian attacks on Azerbaijan’s second-largest city during the 2020 Karabakh conflict.

A ceremony was organized near the ruins of a residential building that was one of several destroyed in Armenian strikes in October 2020.

According to Azerbaijani records, scores of Azerbaijani civilians were killed and injured as Armenian forces launched several attacks on Ganja.

Among those in attendance were Azerbaijan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov, Deputy Prosecutor General Elchin Mammadov, Turkish Ambassador Cahit Bagci and Consul General Zeki Ozturk.

Representatives of several other diplomatic missions and organizations also came to pay their respects.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mammadov said Armenia still denies its violent crimes against civilians in Azerbaijan, including the 1992 massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Khojaly, a small town in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Yerevan acts as if nothing like this ever happened. All information about the crimes committed by Armenia has been sent to the relevant international organizations,” he said.

He added that a report by international group Human Rights Watch found that Armenia “violated the laws of warfare and attacked civilians.”

“However, some states are still silent about these crimes,” he said.

Elchin, the Azerbaijani deputy prosecutor general, said Armenian forces attacked 17 provinces and three cities in Azerbaijan during the 2020 conflict, in which Baku liberated several cities and over 300 settlements and villages that were under Armenian occupation for decades.

He said 93 civilians, including 11 children and 27 women, were killed and 454 more injured in Armenian attacks, while more than 14,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Speaking to reporters at the ceremony earlier, Turkish Ambassador Bagci said Armenia’s crimes against Azerbaijani civilians “must never be forgotten.”