Billboards dedicated to the Khojaly genocide have been installed in Ukraine’s cities at the initiative of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Ukraine, said a message from the embassy on Feb. 23.
Hundreds of billboards have been installed in Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kropyvnytskyi, Mykolaiv, Zhytomyr and other cities during the large-scale events held as part of the Justice for Khojaly international campaign, initiated and led by Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva.
The purpose of the campaign is to inform foreigners about the Khojaly genocide.
On Feb. 25-26, 1992, the Armenian armed forces, together with the 366th infantry regiment of Soviet troops, stationed in Khankendi, committed an act of genocide against the population of the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly. As many as 613 people, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 old people were killed in the massacre. Eight families were totally exterminated, 130 children lost one parent and 25 children lost both. Some 1,275 innocent residents were taken hostage, while the fate of 150 people still remains unknown.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.