18:27, 28 February 2016

Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh pay tribute to memory of victims of Sumgait pogroms

Today, in Stepanakert, officials from the authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh, soldiers and local residents have laid flowers at the monument to victims of the Sumgait pogroms in memory of the events of 1988.

The Sumgait pogroms, which occurred on February 27-28, 1988, were accompanied by mass violence, robbery and murders, and that gave rise to the first flows of refugees from Azerbaijan to Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. According to the official information of the General Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, in Sumgait, 26 Armenians and 6 Azerbaijanis were killed, more than 100 people were wounded, and more than 200 apartments were looted. According to one version, the pogroms were provoked by the Soviet KGB.

"Today, a lot of people have visited the memorial complex in Stepanakert. Public activists, school children, students, pensioners, and officials from the authorities of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic came to the memorial. They laid wreaths and flowers," reports today Albert Voskanyan, a photo blogger of the "Caucasian Knot" from Nagorno-Karabakh. He did not specify the number of the participants of the action.

The blogger has also reported that "according to the official information only, in 1988, 32 Armenians of the city of Sumgait were brutally killed, and hundreds of others got heavy injuries and became disabled."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.