Türkiye says 1992 Khojaly massacre left ‘dark stain on history of humanity’

Türkiye on Monday said that the 1992 Khojaly massacre left a "dark stain on the history of humanity."

Marking the 32nd anniversary of the massacre, a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said: "We strongly condemn the massacre of innocent civilians by Armenian armed forces in Khojaly, Azerbaijan on 26 February 1992."

"We still feel the pain of our 613 brothers and sisters who were killed in Khojaly and all Azerbaijanis wounded, captured or went missing on that day in our hearts," it added.

The ministry reiterated its condolences to the Azerbaijani people.

The Karabakh region had been the site of mass killings and burials since the First Karabakh War in the early 1990s, during which the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh — a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan — and seven adjacent regions, including Khojaly.

The town was the site of a two-hour Armenian offensive that killed 613 Azerbaijani civilians — including 106 women, 63 children, and 70 elderly people — and seriously injured 487 others, according to Azerbaijani figures.

Some 150 of the 1,275 Azerbaijanis that the Armenians captured during what has now been called the Khojaly massacre remain missing, while eight families were completely wiped out.