Descendant of Khojaly Genocide Survivors Speaks Out

According to him, “In 1992, I lost 49 members of my family including my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. I lost a lot of relatives there.” 

Fortunately, some were able to survive: “For 22 weeks before the tragedy, my mother and sister left the town for medical treatment. My dad and grandma stayed there. Electricity and gas were cut off. The main road out of the town was cut. They were shooting almost every night. It was 11am on February 25.  At 23:30, they entered Khojaly.”

At that point, his family “left their homes trying to save their lives. My father last saw his family at 8pm, when he went to check on them. They tried running in the woods. That was the only way to escape.  They were shooting from everyone. Everyone was crying. The cries of children and mothers reached the skies.  They finally reached a place called Nakhivenik, where all of them were killed. Most of the Khojaly people perished there.”

He noted that his father found the corpse of his grandmother about a week later: “She was scalped and all of her valuables were taken. My dad’s cousin was one of the families to be killed entirely. Their bodies were not found. In February, we do not celebrate any celebration or birthday or anything in our family. My dad Shirin Sadikhov passed away 13 years ago in 2010. He could just not bear all of his memories.”