Mass grave discovered in Azerbaijan’s liberated Agdam city

ISTANBUL

A mass grave has been discovered in the Saricali village of Azerbaijan’s liberated city of Agdam, authorities said on Wednesday.

“On November 22, human bones were found as a result of the excavation work carried out with the participation of police, prosecutor’s office and security officials in the Saricali village of Agdam city, which was liberated from occupation,” said a statement from the Azerbaijani Interior Ministry.

The remnants of the people killed and buried are estimated to be from 1992, according to the statement.

The bones recovered from the mass grave were sent for forensic examination to determine whom they belonged to.

The Karabakh region has been the site of mass killings and burials since the First Karabakh War in the early 1990s, among which the most notable has been the Khojaly massacre by Armenian forces.

A two-hour Armenian offensive on the town of Khojaly killed 613 Azerbaijani citizens – including 106 women, 63 children, and 70 elderly people – and seriously injured 487 others, according to Azerbaijani figures.

Some 150 of the 1,275 Azerbaijanis that the Armenians captured during the massacre remain missing, while eight families completely wiped out.

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions – Lachin, Kalbajar, Agdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Qubadli, and Zangilan.

In the fall of 2020, in 44 days of clashes, Baku liberated several cities, villages and settlements in Karabakh from Armenian occupation, ending in a Moscow-brokered truce. The conflict’s peace agreement was celebrated as a triumph in Azerbaijan.