Khojali, the city with population of 7000 people, is situated in Karabakh. It is located on very important strategic way Aghdam, Shusha, Askeran, Khankendi (cities of Karabakh) and has an airport, the only in Karabakh.
Khojali was under unbearable hard Armenian blockade since October 1991. The city lived due to the courage and heroism of its population. Local guard forces and militia organized defence of the city. From the second part of February 1992 Armenian daily attacks became unbearable fierce. Over the night from February 25 to 26, 1992 Armenian armed forces implemented the capture of the Khojali city with the help of hard equipment and the personnel of the infantry guards Russian moto-rifle-regiment # 366 of former Soviet Union. The assault of the city began with the two hours firing by tanks, armored cars and guns with the missile. Khojali was blocked from three sides and the people tried to escape in Askeran direction. But very soon they understood that it was the ominous trap. Near Nakhchivanik village the Armenian armed forces opened the fire on the unarmed people. Just here, in Askeran Nakhchivanik shallow gully so many children and women, elders, frostbitten and weaken in the snow of forests and mountain passes became the victims of the brutality of Armenian armed forces. Armenians persecuted almost every inhabitant of the city and tortured and then killed, burned, disfigured the dead bodies, ravished women and girls; a very great amount of little children were cruelly raped and then killed. The characteristic feature of Armenians is that they usually devised different kinds of tortures for their victims before killing them.
Those days Azerbaijani forces couldn't burst through to help the population of Khojali, and there was no ability to take away the dead bodies. At the same time a special groups of Armenians in white camouflage cloaks using helicopters searched the people in the forests, groups of people who came out the forest were shot or taken as hostages and subjected to tortures. This continued till the March.
On March 1 when the group of the foreign and local journalists could come to this place, the sight was ungodly terrible. The dead bodies were mutilated. Many of them had the bullet wounds to head and this showed that the wounded people were finished. After medical checkup of dead bodies it was determined that they were scalped, their ears and other organs were cut off, the eyes were put out, their extremities were chopped off, they have numerous of gun wounds, many of them were pressed by hard equipment.
Armenian armed forces with military support of the of the infantry guards regiment destroyed Khojali and with particular brutality implemented carnage over the peaceful and defenseless population.
As a result;
613 people were killed, among them,
63 children,
106 women and 70 elders
8 families were killed completely
25 children lost both parents
130 children lost one of the parents
487 people were wounded,
Including 76 children
1275 people were hostages
150 people were missing
The damage done to both state and private property estimated 5 billion rubles.
Actions of Armenian armed forces in Karabakh towards Khojali peaceful inhabitants during the assault of Khojali city roughly violate Geneva conventions as well as 2, 3, 5,9,17 articles of Human Rights Declaration (adopted by UN General Assembly on December 10,1948) and Declaration on protection of women and children in emergency and during armed conflicts (declared by UN General Assembly on December 14, 1974).