THE FACTS CONCERNING THE GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGH THE PART OF THEAZERBAIJANI REPUBLIC OCCUPIED BY THE ARMED FORCES OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA

Arbitrary and extrajudicial executions and mass shootings

Khojaly

One of the most heinous crimes against the Azerbaijyni people was the brutalannihilation of hundreds of blameless inhabitants of the town of Khojaly, in theNagorny Karabakh region of the Azerbaijani Republic, which was taken by Armeniantroops on the night of 25/26 February 1992. The Armenian armed forces andmercenary units spared virtually none of those who had been unable to flee Khojalyand the surrounding area. In the words of the journalist Chingiz Mustafaev, amongthe dead were "... dozens upon dozens of children between 2 and 15 years old, womenand old people, in most cases shot at point- blank range in the head. The positionof the bodies indicated that the people had been killed in cold blood,calculatedly, without any sign of a struggle or of having tried to escape. Some hadbeen taken aside and shot singly; many had been killed as whole families at once. Some corpses displayed several wounds, one of which was invariably in the head,suggesting that the wounded had been finished off. Some children were found withsevered ears; the skin had been cut from the left side of an elderly woman's face;and men had been scalped. There were corpses that had clearly been robbed. Thefirst time we arr'ved at the scene o f the shootings of 28 February, accompanied bytwo military helicopters, we saw from the air an open area about one kilometreacross which was strewn with corpses almost everywhere ..." (Khojaly - The LastDay, Bake, Azerhaijan publishing house, 1992)

An inhabitant of Khojaly, Djanan Orudjev, also provided information on the manyvictims, chiefly women and children. His 16-year-old son was shot , and his23-year-old daughter with her twin children and another, 18-year-old daughter whowas pregnant, were taken hostage. Saria Talybova, who witnessed the bloody tragedyas it unfolded, watched as four Meskhetian Turks, refugees from Central Asia, an dthree Azerbaijanis were beheaded on the grave of an Armenian soldier, and childrenwere tortured and killed before their parents' eyes; two Azerbaijanis in nationalarmy uniform had their eyes put out with screwdrivers. The organized nature of theext ermination of the people of Khojaly was further evident from the fact that thepeaceful inhabitants who fled the town in desperation to save their lives werekilled outside it in previously prepared ambushes. For example, Elman Mamedov,chief of administ ration in Khojaly, reported that a large group of people who hadleft Khojaly came under heavy fire from Armenian light and heavy machine-guns andarmoured personnel carriers near the village of Nakhichevanik. Another resident ofKhojaly, Sanubar Alekpero va, said she would never forget the mountains of corpsesof women, children and old people near Nakhichevanik, where they fell into anambush: in the carnage, her mother and her two daughters, Sevinzh and Khidzhran,were killed and she herself was wounded . Faced with this mass shooting-down ofunarmed people, some of the group made for the village of Gyulably, but there theArmenians took some 200 people hostage. Among them was Dzhamil Mamedov; theArmenians tore out his nails, beat him about the legs and head and took away hisgrandson, and his wife and daughter vanished without trace. (Khojaly - The LastDay, op. cit.)

The majority of the dead were children, women and elderly people. They included 5infants and 18 children of various ages. Seven-year-old Zokhra Nabieva was b urntalive. Three-year-old Rakhman Mamedov was not given the doctor's attention heneeded, and subsequently died. Seven children froze to death, two died after savagebeatings, two were shot. Elman Aliev, three years old, suffered a hear" att.ack.Six we re unable to withstand brutal torture and died; three were run over.

"I had heard a lot about wars, about the cruelty of the Fascists, but the Armenianswere worse, killing five- and six-year-old children, killing innocent civilians",said a French j ournalist, Jean-Yves Junet, who visited the scene of this massmurder of women, old people, children and defenders of Khojaly. (Khojaly - TheLast Day, op. cit.)

One of the French journalist's Russian colleagues, V. Belykh, acorrespondent for the newspaper Izvestia, reported seeing bodies with their eyesgouged out or ears cut off and bodies that had been scalpe.d or beheaded. (Khojaly- The Last Day, op. cit.)

The head of the Armenian Defence Ministry's medical service, Khandar Gadzhiev - aman not unfamiliar, by reason of his job, with the spectacle of death and suffering- was horrified by the ev idence of savage reprisals against the inhabitants ofKhojaly brought before him: a guardsman with his intestines hanging out, peoplewith frostbite, a child whose leg had been tom off by heavy machine-gun fire, agirl whose face had been slashed with a k nife. Major Leonid Kravets reported thathe had "personally seen about 200 bodies" and that with him had been a localpoliceman who, "when he saw his four-year-old son lying among the dead with hishead split open, went out of his mind with grief". (Khojaly - The Last Day, op.cit.)

The report of Memorial, the Moscow-based human riahts group, on the massiveviolations of human rights committed in the taking of Khojaly says of the civilians' flight from the town:"The fuaitives fell into ambushes set by the Armeniansand came under fire. Some of them nonetheless managed to get into Agdam; others,mostly women and child en (exactly how many it is impossible to), froze to deathwhile lo st in the mour.t.ains; others still, according to testimony from those whoreached Agdam, were taken prisoner near the villages of Pirdzharnal andNakhichevanik. 'There is evidence from inhabitants of Khojaly who 'nave alreadybeen exchanged that some of the prisoners were shot ... Around 200 bodies werebrought into Agdam in the space of four days. Scores of the corpses bore traces ofprofanation. Doctors on a hospital train in Agdam noted no less than four corpsesthat had been scalped and one that had been beheaded. State forensic examinationswere carried out in Agdam on 181 corpses (130 male and 51 female, including 13children): the findings were that 151 people had died from gunshot wounds, 20 fromshrapnel wounds and 10 from blows inflicted with a blunt instrument ... The recordsof the hospital train in Agdam, through which almost all the injured inhabitants ordefenders of Khojaly passed, refer to 598 cases of wounds or frostbite (cases offrostbite being in the majority) and one case of l ive scalping". ("A tragedywhose perpetrators cannot be vindicated. A report by Memorial, the Moscow-basedhuman rights group, on the massive violations of human rights committed in thetaking of Khojaly on the night of 25/26 February 1992 by armed unit s", newspaperSvoboda, 12 June 1992.)

SPECIFIC VIOLATIONS OF THE LAWS OF Armed Conflict VIOLENCE TO CIVILIANS,SUMMARY EXECUTIONS' DESTRUCTION OF CIVILIAN PROPERTY, PILLAGE FORCED EVACUATION OfCIVILIAN POPULATION

By the winter of 1991-1992 a pattern of attacks on villages and abuses ofcivilians emerged. These abuses flagrantly violate customary law rules codified inArticle 3 Common to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the Second Ad ditional Protocol of1977', and United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2444. Armenian forcescaptured villages populated by Azerbaijanis, allegedly seeking to end missileattacks on Armenian locations. In the pr ocess, they killed unarmed civilians whoeither remained in the village or who were attempting to flee, looted and sometimesburned their homes, and essentially prevented them from returning to theirvillages. Khojaly

On the night of February 25-26 Armenian forces seized the Azerbaijani town ofKhojaly, located about four miles from Hankandi (Stepanakert). As some of itsresidents, accompanied by retreating Azerbaijani militia and self-defense forces,fled Khojaly seeking to cross the border to reach Agdam, they approached Armenianmilitary posts and were fired upon. The Azerbaijani government is currentlyconducting two investigations of the events, one carried out by a specialparliamentary commission and another by the Procuracy. In addition, the HumanRights Center of Memorial, a prominent Russian nongovernmental organization,conducted an independent investigation of the incident in March 1992. According to Azerbaijani Procuracy officials, before the escalation of the conflictin Nagorno Karabakh, Khojaly had a population of about 6,000; its precisepopulation in February is unknown since some residents may have fled earlier. In1988 Khojaly had only 2,000 residents and had the status of a village; its numbersgrew as Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia were resettled there. The Azerbaijanigovernment had also settled in Khojaly several hundred Meskhetian Turks fleeingpersecution in Central Asia. Finally, Azerbaijanis flocked there from other partsof Nagorno Karabakh, notably from Stepanakert, and continued to do so after theArmenian forces overran their villages in the winter of 1991-92. It received thestatus of town from the Azerbaijani government only in December 1991, and, afterShusha, was the second most populous Azerbaijani town in Nagorno Karabakh.

The only airport in Nagorno Karabakh is located in Khojaly. Since at least1990, an Azerbaijani OMON militia unit was deployed in Khojaly, mainly with thepurpose of defending the town and the airport. The exact numb er of militiadeployed is unknown. Aiden Rasulov, who leads the Azerbaijani Procuracy'sinvestigation of Khojaly, puts the number at twenty-two, although displaced personssaid that as many as forty militia men fled with the town's population. Inaddition, Khojaly had a self-defense group of about 200.

Armenian fighters maintain that they sent an ultimatum to the Azerbaijani forces inKhojaly warning that unless missile attacks from that town on Stepanakert ceased,Armenian forces would attack. According to A.H., an Azerbaijani woman interviewedby Helsinki Watch in Baku, After Armenians seized Malybeyli, they made an ultimatumto Khojaly... and that Khojaly people had better leave with a white flag. AlifGajiev [the head of the militia in Khojaly] told us this on February 15, but thisdidn't frighten me or other people. We never believed they could occupy Khojaly.

According to nearly all of the twenty-two Azerbaijani witnesses of theKhojaly events interviewed by Helsinki Watch, the village had been shelled almoston a daily basis during the winter of 1991-92, and people had grown accustom ed tospending nights in basements. The attack on Khojaly began about 11:00 P.M. on February 25, with heavyshelling and artillery fire. Hassan Alahierov, a construction worker, told HelsinkiWatch, we were used to [hearing] shooting, but usually with machine guns. I wassleeping on the balcony and my son came to me and said that this was a differentnoise. I stood up and... saw BMPs [armed personnel carriers] and tanks wereshooting from all directions.... When I went out I saw bombs f alling everywhere. Several refugees reported that they saw houses burning during the attack on Khojalyor while they were fleeing the village. Juleka Dunemalieva (whose sister died ofexposure during their flight from Khojaly) said that at about midnight or 1:00A.M. she saw the neighborhood where Meskhetian Turks lived go up in flames: "Meskhetians lived in our neighborhood in fhinnish-stylecottages. When their houses were burned we got out right away." Most Khojalyresidents remained in the town un til about 3:00 A.M., some staying in basements inprivate homes. In addition, about 300 residents reportedly took shelter in thebasement of one school. Some reported that they decided to leave at 3:00 A.M.because the self- defe nse forces were running through the streets shoutinginstructions to people to run away. Residents fled the town in sep arate groups,amid chaos and panic, most of them without any belongings or clothes for the coldweather. As a result, hundreds of people suffered - and some died - from severefrostbite. The majority of Khojaly residents w ent along a route that took themacross a shallow river, through the mountains, and, by about dawn, towards an openfield near the village of Nakhichevanik, controlled then by Armenians. It was herethat the most intense sh ooting took place. Other people fled along differentroutes that took them directly by Shelli, an Azerbaijani village near Agdam. Anumber of Khojaly survivors wandered through the forest for several days beforefinding their way to Agdam 's environs.

Positioning of the Militia

Among one of these fleeing groups was the Azerbaijani OMON, led by AlifGajiev, on retreat from the airport. Gajiev had, according to several HelsinkiWatch interviewees, directed the group seeking shelter in the school bas ement toleave the village. At Nakhichevanik Armenians and troops of the CIS 366th regimentopened fire on the retreating OMON militia and the fleeing residents. AllAzerbaijanis interviewed who were in this group reported that the militia, still inuniform, and some still carrying their guns, were interspersed with the masses ofcivilians. For example, Hijran Alekpera, a twenty-three-year-old former bakeryworker, described a mass of civilians who moved along surrounded by a ring ofdefenders. They tried to defend us. They had guns and they would try to shootback."

According to a twenty-one-year-old Azerbaijani woman whose toes had to beamputated because of frostbite damage, The leaders of our group were men. TheArmenians opened fire as we approached the village [of Nakhichevanik]. Theysurrounded us and shot. There was shooting between Armenian soldiers and ours. SA., a member of the OMON unit, told Helsinki Watch, "We were shooting and runningin the pack, but it was not an organized retreat. We were all mixed together." Another young Azerbaijani woman, who suffered frostbite on her legs, alsodescribed the crossfire: "When Armenians saw us they began to shoot. We hid. Atthe same time Azerbaijanis shot back. They were Azerbaijani OMON. Some of the mwere with us when we fled.

Firing on Civilians

Witnesses to and victims of the shooting at Nakhichevanik told HelsinkiWatch of varying numbers of people who fell under fire, and described how theyreceived their gunshot wounds. Thirty-three-year-old Nigar Azizova, who worked in a vegetable store, toldHelsinki Watch that when the crowd started falling over bodies, they turned backand fled in diferent directions. The crowd was about sixty meters long. I was in the middle, and people inthe front were mostly killed. At Nakhichevanik we saw that people in front werefalling. They shouted and fell. I recognized their faces. I could see their facesas we stepped over them. We covered the children's eyes so they wouldn't see.

Mrs.Azizova listed eight people whose bodies she had to step over, and claimed thatthey had no guns: Elshan Abushov, Hassan Abushov, Zelif Alekhpeliev , TevagulAlekhpelieva, Sakhvet Alekhpeliev (who reportedly was nine years old), ElmarAbdulev, Etibar Aushov, and Habib Abushov.

A young Azerbaijani woman who was eventually taken hostage told Helsinki Watch, "Itwas a cultivated field. We approached it and saw that they began to shoot. I musthave seen sixty people dead in th e field. Those who were running away with me felland died."

Hassan Alahierov said: "First we ran to Nakhichevanik, but when they beganshooting people we ran to the other side. There was a BMP standing on the road - Ididn't see it, I just saw the shells. " Alahierov's eighteen-year-old daughte r,who got separated from her father, said she saw the tank: "When the tank began toshoot we ran in all directions. I saw corpses scattered, and saw all the peoplesurrounding them fall."

Hijran Alekpera reported that: By the time we got to Nakhichevanik it was 9:00 A.M. There was a field andthere were many people who had been killed. There were maybe one hundred. Ididn't try to count. I was wounded on th[is] field. Gajiv Aliev was shot and Iwanted to help him. A bullet hit me in the belly. I could see where they wereshooting from. I saw other bodies in the field. They were newly killed - theyhadn't changed color.

Fifty-one-year-old Balaoglan Allakhiarov said:

We got to Nakhichevanik at 8:00 A.M., and were in the middle of the fieldwhen they began to fire. They were shooting only from one direction - the forest.Then we ran off the field toward a canyon, where my wife and daughter-in -law wereshot. They were shot from about twenty meters. My daughter-in-law was struckthree times - through the skull, in her stomach and in her leg. My wife was hitfrom behind. [The Armenians] took off their rings.

At about 8:00 A.M. Nazile Khetemova received a gunshot wound in her left leg:

We were all crawling. Whoever stood up got wounded. I stood up to rest mylegs and was wounded. I saw many people get shot, and we had to leave them as wecrawled along. After I was wounded I didn't see many people pass me; they hid inthe forest. I stayed in the snow until 7:00 P.M. Members of the Popular Front came and helpedme escape.

Beginning February 27, Azerbaijani helicopters brought in personnel whoattempted to collect bodies and assist the wounded. Some of the rescue team werewearing camouflage clothing, and they were constantly shot at by Armenian forces. Members of the first rescue group, who were accompanied by aFrench journalist, reported that some of the corpses had been scalped or otherwisemutilated. One member of the group videotaped the mission.

Death Toll There are still no definitive figures on the number of civilians who wereshot while fleeing Khojaly. According to Aiden Rasulov, more than 300 bodiesshowing evidence of a violent death were submitted for forensic exam ination. Atthe time of Helsinki Watch's visit to Baky, the results of these examinations hadnot been completed, and the investigative team was in the process of tracking downthe corpses of Khojaly victims that had been removed from Agdam by family membersin the first days after the tragedy. Earlier figures made available by Azerbaijanand published by the Memorial group put the number of deaths resulting fromgunshot, shrapnel, or other wounds at 181, (130 men and fifty-one women, includingthirteen children). In addition, an undetermined number died of frostbite. Namig Aliev, who heads theDepartment on Questions of Law and Order and Defense of the Azerbaijani Parliamentand who is part of the parliamentary group investigating the Khojaly events, toldHelsinki Watch in April that 213 Khojaly victims were buried in Agdam. Some of thebodies rec eived at the makeshift hospital in Agdam were identified as combatants. Many male bodies that lacked all identification were not identified as civilian orcombatant Aliev also reported that of those bodies submitted for forensicexamination, thirty-three had been scalped, had body parts removed, or had beenotherwise mutilated. One hundred eighty individuals from Khojaly are reported to be missing. As noted in Appendix V to this report, the civilian population andindividual civilians are not legitimate objects of attack in any armed conflict. The contending parties accordingly must distinguish at all times between c iviliansand combatants and direct their attacks only against the latter. Moreover, theparties may not use civilians to shield military targets from attack or to shieldmilitary operations, including retreats. Thus, a party that interspersescombatants with fleeing civilians puts those civilians at risk and violates itsobligation to protect its own civilians.

Although retreating combatants and civilians who assume a combatant's rolewhile fleeing are subject to direct individualized attack, the attacking party isstill obliged to take precautionary measures to avoid or minimize civiliancasualties. In particular, the party must suspend an attack if it becomes apparentthat the attack may be expected to cause civilian casualties that are excessive inrelation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Thecircumstances surrounding the attack at Nakhichevanik on those fleeing Khojalyindicate that Armenian forces and the t roops of the 366 th CIS regiment (who werenot apparently acting on orders from their commanders) deliberately disregardedthis customary law restraint on attacks. Nagorno Karabakh officials and fightersclearly expected the inhabitants of Khojaly to flee since they claim to haveinformed the town that a corridor would be left open to allow for their safepassage. No witnesses interviewed by Helsinki Watch, however, said that they kne wbeforehand of such a corridor. In addition, although witnesses and victims gavevarying testimony on the precise time the shooting began at Nakhichevanik, they allindicated that there was sufficient light to allow for reason able visibility and,thus, for the attackers to distinguish unarmed civilians from those persons whowere armed and/or using weapons. Further, despite conflicting testimony about thedirection from which the fire was coming, th e evidence suggests that the attackersindiscriminately directed their fire at all fleeing persons. Under thesecircumstances, the killing of fleeing combatants could not justify the foreseeablylarge number of civilian casualties. Malybeyli and Gushchulur

This pair of Azerbaijani villages is separated by a low hill and shared thesame village administration. They are located a few kilometers from Stepanakert,and, together, had a population of between 2,000 and 4,000. Malybe yli andGushchular had a joint self-defense unit of about eighty. According to a member ofGushchular's self-defense forces, seventeen militia men served there, and a smallunit of the National Army was deployed in G ushchular in January for about twentydays. Azerbaijani forces reportedly shelled Armenian villages from this area.

By October or November 1991 residents of Malybeyli and Gushchular werebasically confined to their villages, as travel elsewhere could be done only behelicopter.

The majority of women and children were evacuated on December 12, accordingto a Helsinki Watch interview with a member of Gushchular's self-defense forces,but many still remained. According to witnesses' accounts, Armenian forces beganheavy shooting and shelling of these two villages in December 1991. A report inthe newspaper Express Chronick asserted that on February 5 a helicopter distributedleaflets warning villagers that they had two days to leave before "the settlementwould cease to exist," but no interviewees confirmed this report. Armenian forcesattacked these villages with heavy artillery and armed personnel carri ers on thenight of February 9-10, with the alleged aim of ending the shelling of Armenianvillages. Malybeyli was attacked first, and most of its villagers reportedly fledto neighboring Gushchular. The entire attack lasted two days. Residents ofMalybeyli and Gushchular reported that as they fled they saw, from atop a hill akilometer away, houses in flames. They cannot return to their villages, which arenow in Armenian hands. Eight people were reportedly killed as a result of theseizure of Malybeyli, some of whom were women and children. Residents of Gushchular fled to Agdam about 9:00 A.M. on February 1 l. AnAzerbaijani who worked as a tractor mechanic on the local collective farm toldHelsinki Watch, at 7:00 A.M. Armenians surrounded the village from all sides an dshot everywhere. At 8:00 A.M. [our] soldiers told us we had to leave the village. Some of us were killed on the road while fleeing. According to the reports ofseveral eyewitnesses, the militia and self-defense forces, which still had theirguns, were mixed with civilians as they were fleeing. According totwenty-seven-year-old Gulbenes Zenalova, a woman from Gushchular:

On February 11, shooting started, and we could see that Malybeyli wasburning. We fled to Agdam on the Abu Gulabli road, the only way out. While wefled they attacked us at Garov, Piramali, and Deheraz villages, wh ere theArmenians had posts. Everyone left together, at 9 or so. The militia defended uswhile we were retreating. My niece was injured on her head. I saw blood on herhead. She's five years old. Bullets were flying i n all directions. We wouldhurry along, and when they would shoot we would hide behind the trees. I saw threepeople fall from being shot. They weren't armed: Ali Allakhverdov, fifty-five tosixty years old, with seven sons and a daughter; Akhmedov Kunduz, eighteen yearsold; and a nineteen-year-old boy called ElShan. Rafael Guliev, who describedhimself as Malybeyli's representative, alleged that the self-defense forces andArmenian fighters exchanged fire. Guliev told Helsinki Watch: We met Armenianfighters in the forest around noon. We shouted at them to let the women and kids goand we men will stay here. The Armenians said "give us your weapons and we will letthe women and kids through." There were soldiers in our village, Russians andUkrainians who fled their divisions in Stepanakert. Three of them holding white handkerchiefs approached the Armenians but theyopened fire. Then they shot at us, and the self-defense groups... returned thefire. We had to take the women out through the forest to Abu Gulabli village. During the eight hours on the way sometimes we had to fight. The men werefighting and people fled as best they could.

I don't know what's happened to my house, but I saw [houses] in the villageburning There was a mountain on the way when we left, in the village of Garokh. They were Finnish houses, and they had a stone foundation and the rest was mad e ofpine. [One of them belonged to] a man named Wagif, who is an electrician.

Masahir Bairanov, who said he moved to Malybeyli in 1989 because "Armenianswere pressuring us" in his home village of Hasanabad, also was an eyewitness tothe exchange between Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Russian sold iers described aboveby Mr. Guliev. A member of the self-defense forces, Bairanov told Helsinki Watchthat:

We told the [Russian soldiers], you're Russians - perhaps they won't kill you. TheRussians just went. They didn't object. When Russians went up to them with whiteflags they had no arms. I had my hunting gun. All three of them were killed.

A thirty-six-year-old member of the self-defense forces of that village whowas wounded during the retreat from Gushchular told Helsinki Watch that during theretreat "I saw my house on fire. From the mountain ridge I saw how the villa ge wasburning.... I saw from spy glasses how they entered the houses, and when they wentout, the houses burned."

Among the eight civilians reported killed in the seizure of Malybeyli andGushchular was Nubar Zenalova. Her son, a sixty-four-year-old retired collectivefarm worker stayed in his house with Zenalova, who was alleged to be 110 years old.Mr. Zenalov told Helsinki Watch:

We lived well, and had a good house.... On February 11 Armenians started attackingthe village.... I didn't flee because my mother is very old and she couldn't leave.I was at home when they [the Armenians] came into my house and put a gun to myhead. They killed my mother, Nubar Zenalova. There were three other women in myhouse, and they were taken hostage... They took [at least three] people from thevillage, and all were my relatives. One was eighty-four, Unis Guliev - he's in thehospital; Kerim Kerimov, who is sixty-six years old (he's also in the hospital);and Gafar Zuneilov, who's sixty-one.

The same man told Helsinki Watch that he had heard that his house wasburned, although he himself did not see it burn. He was eventually taken hostage;while his captors held him briefly in Malybeyli, the man allegedly saw abou ttwelve cars hauling things away from the houses, including carpets.

He told Helsinki Watch:

I didn't see [my house] burn, but I heard when they were taking us toStepanakert the commander ordering them to burn the house after they robbed it. Iwas in the basement when the [Armenians] came. They said they were orde red not toburn the house until they robbed it.... I saw the school and the club burning inthe village.

Kerkijahan Kerkijahan is a village that was inhabited entirely by Azerbaijanis,consisting of about 320 houses on a hill overlooking Stepanakert. It was attackedtwice in land assaults by Armenian forces - on December 5-6 and on December 28 -seeking to seize its missile launchers. During these attacks many civilian houseswere reportedly burned. Most of Kerkijahan's women and children left after thefirst attack in early December.

Rachel Husugeza, a young Azerbaijani woman who fled on December 5-6, toldHelsinki Watch that "two houses were burning in our neighborhood, and then atmidnight soldiers came to take out the women and children. Forty or fifty peopl efled that night to Shusha."

An elderly Azerbaijani woman who stayed on in Kerkijahan until December 28reported that her nephew had returned to the village and discovered that her househad been burned. "He said that all the houses had collapsed and that thei r wallswere blackened," she told Helsinki Watch. According to another Azerbaijani womaninterviewed by Helsinki Watch who had worked as a salesperson in Stepanakert until1988, Garibe Elias, a woman of about fifty-five, attempted to return to Kerkijahanto get her documents and money she had left. On her way out of the village, shewas reportedly killed along with her husband, and her body mutilated. Djemili According to Sevendikh Kerimov, Djemili was an Azerbaijani village of about120 houses surrounded by three Armenian villages (Balodjo, Khannazek, andMekhtkend) with which it shared a state farm. Kerimov told Helsinki Watch that hisvillage was frequently shot at from nearby foothills, and that in January it wasshelled. Houses in Djemili were made of stone and were very close to each other.He told Helsinki Watch:

During the shelling in January we were staying in a basement, and someonefrom the self-defense came and said my house had been struck by a BMP shell. Wecould see the house from a distance. It was destroyed, but not burned. Our house was on the top of the canyon. There were ten [Azerbaijani] OMON in our village,who mainly lived in people's houses. One lived in my house. There was no militiastation at all. My house was not near any self-defense post. I saw the tanks [tha twere shelling us] from a distance. I saw four, but there may have been more. Akholu

Located in the Gadrut district, this Azerbaijani village had about 102houses and 600 people. The village was reportedly shot at and shelled every day. Shamama Guleieva, an Azerbaijani from Akholu who worked as a doctor's assistant,told Helsinki Watch that:

We couldn't even get water. We had to go out of our house through thewindow because our door faced the Armenian side and if they saw us they would shootat us. During the last month we had to live at our relatives' house.

Guleieva and her husband left with the other villagers on January 9 because theshelling - involving Alazani rockets, grenades, RPGs, and "other weapons" - becameso bad that it was impossible to stay. [The next morning] we crept through thebushes and cemetery and saw houses in our village burning. We did not go back tothe village after that. The Armenians had posts - we tried the next morning tolook but they saw us and opened fire. No o ne was injured from that incident,however. Kiusular

Kiusular consists of five separate clusters of about forty or fifty houseseach, with a total population of about 2,000. Attacks on Kiusular reportedly beganon December 25, and about February 25 the village's women and children left,leaving the men to fight. On February 9 the home of M.D., whom Helsinki Watchinterviewed in Yevlakh, was hit with a rocket, destroying one of its sides. M.D.was in the cellar, located several meters from the house itself. No self- defenseposts w ere in her area: "They shot right in the middle and we had to leave," shetold Helsinki Watch. Zerefina Guleieva told Helsinki Watch that she left February 26 becauseThere was shooting every day, then an attack with rockets. Some houses were burned,and so were the roofs of others. The rockets went off around all five sub-vi llagesand in the center. In one of the sub-villages I saw two houses - one was totallydestroyed and the other was burned. Kiusular was later taken over by Armenianforces on May 10.

INDISCRIMINATE ATTACKS, TARGETING OF CIVILIAN STRUCTURES

Armenian forces actively shelled and engaged in sniper attacks on towns andvillages. The shelling alone damaged or destroyed hospitals, homes, and otherobjects that are not legitimate military targets under applicable humanitarian lawru les. These attacks killed or left maimed hundreds of civilians, and generallyterrorized the civilian Population.

Shusha Shusha was the major Azerbaijani stronghold in Nagorno Karabakh until itwas seized by Karabakh forces on May 12, 1992. It was the launching site formissile attacks on Stepanakert and neighboring towns, and a target for shell firefrom Stepanakert. Women and children began to be evacuated from Shusha in early February 1992. Someof the shelling of Shusha was, according to the accounts of former residents,either indiscriminate or intentionally aimed at civilian targets. Gulsheli Hasanova, a twenty-two-year-old Azerbaijani woman, told HelsinkiWatch:

We had to leave the city because it was often bombed and because there wasno heat or running water. The shelling had been going on for a long time butlately it had become impossible to live. Our house had been damaged in theshelling, but I wasn't there when it happened. Many buildings were destroyed on mystreet, Niazi Street - one was destroyed during a funeral. The hospital andpolyclinic were destroyed sometime in 1992. The factory where I worked and m ostmunicipal buildings were destroyed, and this all happened in the latest months.

Another young woman, who left Shusha on February 22, reported that herhouse was hit by a shell on February 15, destroying the balcony and its adjoiningwall. Her house was located in the town's center, near the market and the cit ygovernment building. Her mother, who lived with the young woman, reported that inearly March most of the upper part of Shusha had been destroyed, with some damagedone to the mosque.

Rachel Husugeza, who had fled Kerkijahan in early December to stay withrelatives in Shusha, told Helsinki Watch that:

Chiefly the [Armenians] would try to shell military objects and thehospital. The hospital operating room was destroyed in February. The wall of oneof our bedrooms was destroyed on February 3. The bedroom was destroyed and thecorrid or was damaged. Its windows faced Shusha Kent, where Armenians lived.

Malybeyli and Gushchular

Masahir Bahirov, a former collective farm worker and member of Malybeyli'sself-defense forces, described to Helsinki Watch some of the damage done to hishome by Armenian shelling attacks during the winter of 1992:

Ilived in a house with my father and brother. There were three families living inthe house.... While my father and brother were out def ending the village the roofwas destroyed. A BMP missile hit it and the stones fell in. The shrapnel remainedin the house. This was February 5, and the children were in the basement. No onefom my family was injured, but our neighbor's ch ild was. He was also staying inour basement. His name is Niazi Aslanov, he was in the eighth grade, fourteen yearsold. He was wounded on the leg and stomach with shrapnel.

Khojaly

Before it was captured by Karabakh Armenian forces, Khojaly had beenshelled continuously during the winter months of 1991-1992 (see above). Theshelling would apparently take place mostly at night. According to r eports fromdisplaced persons from Khojaly, some of the shelling was indiscriminate, ordirectly aimed at civilian targets, and resulted in civilian casualties.

A middle-aged mother of six told Helsinki Watch that although her house hadonly been slightly damaged, some of the other houses were either fully destroyed orhad holes in their roofs caused by missile fire. She further provided a brie fdescription of the deaths of two of her neighbors, a young, newly married couplewho died in early February when a missile hit their house.

Agdam In early March, Armenian forces began intense shelling of towns locatedalong the eastern border separating Nagorno Karabakh from the rest of Azerbaijan. These towns include Agdam and Fizuli, which are staging grounds fo r Azerbaijanioperations in Nagorno Karabakh. Among the civilian structures destroyed in Agdamwas the central market. Helsinki Watch representatives noted that the market wastotally burned out in what appeared to be a per fect hit, and that little damagewas evident to the streets or houses surrounding it. The makeshift hospital,located in railroad cars near the Popular Front command headquarters, was bombed inearly March. An Azerbaijani cafe director told Helsinki Watchthat two people in his neighborhood were killed when a Grad missile exploded, aboutMarch 23. One of them, Ekhbar Husseinov, was returning to his home during thedaytime when a rocket exploded in front of a store. He also reported that he sawconsiderable damage on Azbekov, Varashlov and Kirov streets, all apparentlyresidential areas.

On April 11 at 4:00 P.M. a grenade from an RPG reportedly blew up thehouse of Sevil Pashaieva, located in the woods near Agdam. Shrapnel from theexplosion caused head wounds to her year-old son, Semur. According to Semur'sdoctors, whom Helsinki Watch interviewed at the Agdam Military Hospital, Mrs. Pashaieva, who was holding her son in her arms at the time, sustained shrapnelwounds to her legs. Abu Gulabli

On April 24, fourteen-year-old Ali Biramov was herding cattle near his homewhen fragments from a high caliber machine gun hit his hands; all of his fingershad to be amputated. It is not known if his home was located near a mil itarypost. Popravent On April 24 Zahir Gambarov, a twelve-year-old Azerbaijani boy, was playingin his yard when a shell, apparently from an RPG, exploded near him, causingshrapnel wounds. His house, located ten meters away from where he was playi ng,was unharmed. According to the boys account, the village self-defense post islocated in the mountains, and not near his home.

Xhojaly

According to Mr. Bakhimov, 773 hostages were taken at Khojaly, most ofthem civilians. Exchange of most these hostages apparently began on the second dayafter the storming of Khojaly, when Armenians began to give bac k Azerbaijani womenand children following are the accounts of several individuals captured duringtheir flight from Khojaly: Miss Abasova, a twenty-one-year-old woman:

We got near Shelli at about 4:00 P.M. They opened fire on us. We lay down. There were no soldiers with us. Then we were surrounded. We asked them not totake us, but they said they couldn't release us and that they had t o take us totheir commander. They took us to Pirdjamal. When we got there we saw people fromanother group who had gotten separated from us earlier. I was kept with my familyin an old building with sheep and cattle . Then they separated out the women andchildren to exchange them. They began to beat the men with rifle butts and billyclubs. There was a wall [separating us] but it didn't go to the end, so I could seea little. My father was beaten. They didn't beat women, but they stoleeverything. I was kept three days with my family and two days on my own. We weretaken to Stepanakert with my sisters and other women.

A twenty-year-old Azerbaijani woman who received a bullet wound in her leftfoot at Nakhichevanik was reportedly captured along with twelve other people (amongthem, five women) by seven or eight Armenians. According to her account, nomembers of the self-defense forces were with her. Her captors ordered the group togive up their valuables, mostly rings, chains, and earrings worn by women. Thewoman told Helsinki Watch, "We were taken by foot to the Askeran militia and put inone cell. All the men were taken away. Then I was put in a cell with thirty orforty other women from Khojaly. The militia chief came and told us not to beafraid, that we would be exchanged.... Long-haired men with beards andbullet-proof vests would come by [and threaten us]. Local Armenians brought usbread and water.

Gushchular Twelve hostages were reported to have been seized as a result of thecapture of Gushchular, most of them elderly and all of whom were reported to havebeen exchanged. Helsinki Watch spoke with one of them, a woman of about sixtynamed Kulu stan Akhmedova, who was captured at Deheraz as she was fleeing. Mrs.Akhmedova told Helsinki Watch:

Two of us were taken, myself and Guleisha Zenalova. I had taken 6,000rubies with me. The Armenians took that money and our gold things in Agbulak, andthen they took us to Askeran. They kept us for a week in a KPZ (kamerapredvoritel'nogo zaklsucheniia, or pre-trial detention cell). Then an Armenianfrom Ketikh came and took us home for a week. We were the only ones in the KPZ. They didn't beat us. They gave us a piece of black bread in the mornings andevenings and a pot of tea. The Armenian [who took us home] gave us things to eat,potatoes and stuff like that, nuts and things. He said his son was in Shusha andthey were going to exchange us. He didn't beat us or do anything to us. Then wewere taken to Dashalti. Two Armenian men beat us with sticks. They struck us onour han ds and faces and insulted us in Muslim language [Azerbaijani]. They leftblack and blue marks. One of them said the Muslims had killed his father, theother said they had killed his brother. They left us outdoors, and we two womenwere outside all night until morning.

Then they took us to the forest between Shusha and Dashalti and exchangedus there.

Niazi Zenialov, a sixty-four-year-old man whose mother was killed byAzerbaijani fighters, related his experience to Helsinki Watch:

They came in about 9:00 or 10:00 A.M. They didn't say anything, they justhit me on the neck with a rifle butt. Then they said they would take us toStepanakert and kill us. They said it in Armenian. [Other] Armenians spoke in wrongArmenia n. They were speaking a different Armenian dialect I couldn'tunderstand.... They took four of us in a truck to Malybeyli and then in a van. Theydidn't put handcuffs or blindfolds on us. We went to the headquarters inStepanakert. One man came to the car, pointed at me and said, 'One of my relativeshas been taken hostage by Azerbaijanis. I'll take him home.' Then three Armenianscame and took the other three and I didn't see them again.

They took me by car to the home of the Armenian. They threw me in thebasement and I stayed there for two months.... They allowed me to get fresh air. The house was on Gorki Street. Slavik Arapetia n was a hostage of Azerbaijan, andhis wife took good care of me. She's about thirty-five or forty, and taught Russianin school. She's educated. She said her husband was arrested in May. She said,'I'm taki ng care of you only because of my husband. There's no food here - howcan I feed you?

When fighters came to beat me up she wouldn't let them; she would fightwith them. They used to come almost every night. They would talk about thevillages they seized and said they would kill my sons.

I was exchanged between Askeran and Agdam. Bakhlyl Pashaev, a man in his late fifties who took no part in militaryactivities, told Helsinki Watch that he was captured on February 26, 1992, atDeheraz as he was fleeing Khojaly. Along with a huge crowd of other Khojaly residents, he was taken first to a barn, where their belongings were taken from them(and apparently never returned). Two days later a group of nineteen Azerbaijanis,including Pashaev, were taken back to Khojaly, where they were beaten with rifiebutts, and then to the Stepanakert prison. He was detained in a cell along withseven other people; each day of his detention about five Armenian men reportedlycame to the cell and beat them.

Pashaev and the other captives were given fifty grams of bread per day, and had nomattresses to sleep on.

During Pashaev's captivity six separate international and humanitariandelegations visited the Stepanakert prison. Pashaev said that before each of thesevisits, his Armenian captors threatened to beat the hostages if the latter told themi ssions that they were beaten or related anything about their conditions. Pashaevwas released on April 20, after fifty-five days of captivity.

A twenty-one-year-old Azerbaijani woman' and her brother were seized whilefleeing Khojaly and brought to the Askeran militia. The woman witnessed thebeating of her brother: 2 They wanted to exchange me but I didn't want to go because my brother wasstill a hostage. He was beaten for four days. I could hear voices crying. Then Istayed in a cell with my brother. They beat him in front of me with metal rods,and bashed his lip with a machine gun. I was released March 4 with my brother andfour other people. In relation to the Khojaly events, the Azerbaijanis claim that Armenianforces prevented the rescue of the dead and wounded. Representatives of theAzerbaijani Procuracy's team investigating Khojaly told Helsinki Watch thatattempts to rescue the wounded and collect the bodies of the dead, which began onFebruary 27, 1992, were repeatedly either cut short or had to be aborted because ofshooting by Armenian forces. As a result, some victims were left lying in the snowawait ing help. Aiden Rasulov, head of the Procuracy's effort, told Helsinki Watchthat during the first rescue attempt the team saw a girl lying on the ground andtrying to move to amact attention. When the helicopter attempted to land, however,Armenian forces opened fire.