Khojaly §

Airport town and atrocity site

Khojaly, or Xocali, was a small Azerbaijani-populated town near Stepanakert and the only airport in the former NKAO. Its location gave it military importance in the winter of 1991–92: Azerbaijani forces used the area around Khojaly and Shusha in the wider siege of Armenian-held Stepanakert, while Armenian forces viewed the town as a barrier between Stepanakert and the Askeran road. That military setting does not diminish what happened to civilians there. It explains why civilians were trapped in a battlefield. editorial

On the night of 25–26 February 1992, Armenian forces captured Khojaly. Hundreds of Azerbaijani civilians fleeing the town were killed after passing through or near Armenian-held lines. Memorial Human Rights Center documented mass violations and criticised both Armenian forces for attacks on civilians and Azerbaijani authorities for failing to evacuate the population adequately Memorial. Human Rights Watch also treated Khojaly as the largest massacre of the First Karabakh War HRW.

The numbers remain politically charged. Azerbaijani state commemoration uses 613 killed; Memorial confirmed a smaller documented count while acknowledging that the final number could be higher. Armenian denialist framings sometimes shift responsibility entirely onto Azerbaijani political rivals or battlefield confusion. Those framings are not credible when used to erase Armenian responsibility for civilian deaths. Azerbaijani framings become propagandistic when they use Khojaly to deny or relativise other atrocities, including the Sumgait and Baku pogroms. contested

Khojaly is now central to Azerbaijani national memory and diplomacy. It is invoked in schools, foreign campaigns and public monuments as proof of Armenian brutality. For the atlas, its significance is twofold: it is a real atrocity with named Azerbaijani victims, and it is also a case study in how atrocity memory becomes statecraft. editorial