Armenians killed 1000, Azeris charge.

THE BOSTON GLOBE
March 3, 1992
By Paul Quinn-Judge
(Front page headline)

BAKU, Azerbaijan-Azerbaijan charged yesterday that Armenian militants massacred men, women and children after forcing them from a town in Nagorno-Karabagh last week.

Azerbaijani officials said 1000 Azeris had been killed in town of Khojaly and that Armenian fighters then slaughtered men, women and children fleeing across snow-covered mountain passes.

Armenian officials disputed the death toll and denied the massacre report.

Journalists on the scene said it was difficult to say exactly how many people had been killed in surrounding areas. But a Reuters photographer said he saw two trucks filled with Azeri corpses, and a Russian journalist reported massacre sites elsewhere in the area.

Azeri officials and journalists who flew briefly to the region by helicopter recovered the bodies of three dead children who had been shot in the head, Reuters said, but Armenians prevented them from retrieving more bodies.

In the Azerbaijani capital of Baku,government officials said that communications with Shusha,the last Azeri foothold in Nagorno-Karabagh,were cut yesterday morning. The militant Azerbaijani Popular Front reported that Armenian troops backed by armor and artillery were moving closer to town.

Shusha was shelled again overnight,according to accounts reaching Baku yesterday.

Fighting over the enclave, administered by Azerbaijan but largely populated by ethnic Armenians, has flared into a full scale war over the last month.

In the four years up to this January, some 1000 people are believed to have been killed in the con- flict. Although figures are extremely unreliable, at least several hundreeds people have probably died in the past four weeks.

The Azerbaijani Popular Front has been predicting an attack on Shusha for the last two days. But information on the fighting inside the enclave cannot be confirmed independently.

Officials of both the Azerbaijani government and the Popular Front claim that the final attack on Shusha could be triggered by the withdrawal of the last units of the former Soviet army stationed in Nagorno-Karabagh, the 366th Regiment.

The withdrawal began yesterday, said General Nikolai Popov, commander of the Baku-based 4th Army, in a brief phone interview yesterday.

The Azerbaijan presidential press service, quoting the republic's Ministry of National Security, claimed that commonwealth troops were going to move out through Shusha, destroying the town's defences as they did so.

Popov said he did not know if the regiment would leave through Shusha. Asked who might know this, he answered, "No one's going to tell you." Commonwealth airborne units reportedly have been moved into Nagorno- Karabagh to cover regiment's withdrawal.

Officials in Moscow and Armenia said that the 366th Regiment, based in the regional center of Stepanakert [Hankendi -- Ed.], has been strictly neutral in the fighting.

Azeri sources, however, claim that the 366th has swung actively on the side of Armenians,notably in the capture of last week of the small town of Khojaly, on the road between Stepanakert [Hankendi -- Ed.] and Agdam.

There were growing signs that many civilians were killed during the capture of Khojaly.

Footage shot by Azerbaijan Television Sunday showed about 10 dead bodies, including several women and children, in an improvised morgue in Agdam. An editor at the main television station in Baku said 180 bodies had been recovered so far. A helicopter flying over the vicinity is reported to have seen other corpses, while the BBC quoted a French photographer who said that he had counted 31 dead, including women and children, some who appeared as though they were shot in the head at close range.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Khojaly, Elmar Mamedov, said at a news conference in Baku that 1000 people had died in the attack, 200 more were missing, 300 had been taken hostage, and 200 were injured. Armored personel carriers of the 366th [Regiment -- Ed.] spearheaded the attack, Mamedov charged, and cleared the way for Armenian irregulars.

If Shusha does indeed fall, its loss could send shock waves through Azerbaijani society.