ANKARA
Azerbaijan's envoy to Turkey has described the 1992 massacre of Azeri people in Khojaly as "genocide".
Ambassador Faig Bagirov made the comments on Tuesday at the commemorative event "Justice for Khojaly" organized by the European Azerbaijan Society in Ankara, where the victims were remembered.
"While witnesses of the massacre are still living the pain, the criminals are living freely, thanks to the double standards of the world," Bagirov said.
Armenian military forces took over the town of Khojaly in Nagorno-Karabakh on Feb. 26, 1992, and battered it with heavy artillery and tanks, assisted by an infantry regiment.
The two-hour offensive killed 613 Azeri citizens, including 116 women and 63 children and critically wounded 487 others.
A survivor of the Khojaly incident, Valeh Huseynov, said the offensive was "a crime not just towards Azeri people, but to the entire world".
After the conference, a film called "Endless Corridor" narrated by Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons was shown, telling the story of the incident.
The invasion of the Azeribaijan territory of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenia started in 1988 with minor conflicts but evolved into a full war in 1992.
Since the end of the war in 1994, Armenian and Azeri delegations have held talks over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh under the supervision of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) Minsk Group.
Currently, Nagorno – Karabakh and seven adjacent districts which comprise more than 20 percent of the Azerbaijani territory are still under Armenia’s occupation
