The identities of those buried have not yet been established. They will be genetically analyzed using state-of-the-art identification methods.
There is already no doubt, however, as to whom these remains belong, and who were dumped into the pit and covered with earth in this inhuman way. It is quite obvious that this is the handiwork of Armenian war criminals, and the remains belong to Azerbaijani civilians executed during the first Karabakh war.
Immediately after the publication of this report, Armenian social media, apparently feeling that the shoe would fit, rushed to invent various fairy tales. Some of the users commented: “Since when are the remains of two persons considered genocide?”, another went further and accused Azerbaijanis of “burying the remains of Armenians killed by them and now passing them off as Khojaly residents.”
All this, of course, is typical Armenian propaganda nonsense. The discovered burial site is old, dating back to the first Karabakh war. The remains could not belong to Armenians, because their compatriots never dumped their fellow countrymen into pits in such an inhuman way, burying them without names, signs and so on. They even took the trouble to transport the bodies of many eliminated invaders to Armenia, where they buried them with all honors either in Yerablur or in their home towns. But to throw dozens of human bodies into pits and bury them in secret without notifying their relatives and without any hint of respect, this was something they did only with those they hated. It is simple: Armenians lived in Askeran and they hated Azerbaijanis. To whom else could the bodies of people dumped in the pit without any respect belong, and who could have done it? These are rhetorical questions.
The mass grave is the handiwork of none other than Armenians, because it was the Armenian occupiers who ran this part of Karabakh.
Given the location of the discovered mass grave and its proximity to Khojaly, and the route by which the ill-fated Khojaly residents tried to flee on foot to escape extermination, there is no doubt that these are most likely the villagers killed in late February 1992 or their fellow villagers executed a little later, after they were first taken hostage by the Armenians, tortured and abused.
DNA analysis of the remains will establish the identities of the massacred citizens with no margin for error. And if names from the list of 150 missing Khojaly residents are among them, it will be another slap in the shameless faces of the scoundrels who deny Armenia’s role in the extermination of the inhabitants of Khojaly.
Obviously, the myth that “Azerbaijanis were killed by Azerbaijanis from the PFA themselves” and that “it happened on the outskirts of Aghdam” does not deserve even discussion and any participation in debates on this topic. However, with the discovery of the mass grave, the spluttering deniers face another uncomfortable question, which they will have to answer to themselves: if the Khojaly residents were killed not by Armenians, but by “PFA militants”, what were these notorious PFA militants doing in Askeran? Or maybe Askeran was also “under the control of the PFA”? Or maybe the residents of Askeran simply decided to “help” the residents of Aghdam with the burial?
Naturally, these too are all rhetorical questions.
We can only wait for the identification of those buried in that mass grave. We have a list of 150 missing Khojaly residents, and the probability that someone from that list may be among the identified remains is quite high.
Zohrab Dadashov
Translated from Minval.az
