ArmInfo.The massacre of the residents of the Maraga settlement of the Mardakert region of the Artsakh Republic, committed by the Azerbaijani army on April 10, 1992, is one of the most tragic episodes of Azeri aggression against Artsakh. This is stated in the comments of the Office of Information and Public Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Artsakh Republic.
According to the source, after a long shelling, Azeri armed units invaded the village of Maraga, where 118 people remained, mostly elderly, disabled, women and children. As a result of the unprecedented war crimes committed by the Azeri armed forces, more than 50 people were killed, the rest, including 9 children and 29 women, were taken hostage. Some of them later managed to be returned, but the fate of 19 hostages remains unknown to this day. The village was liberated by the armed forces of Artsakh, but after two weeks it was re-attacked, and the people who returned to bury their relatives were victims of new outrages of the Azeri army. The attack on the village, it is said in the commentary, was not due to military necessity, but was directed, first of all, to massacre its civilians. "The crime in Maraga was the continuation of a series of Armenian pogroms and deportations in Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad and other settlements of Azerbaijan, as well as in the villages of Northern Artsakh in 1988-1991, which aimed to strangle the national liberation struggle of the Artsakh Armenians in the bud and deprive their homeland through ethnic cleansing and terror against Artsakh and the Armenian population of Azerbaijan. The impunity of the organizers and perpetrators of these crimes created a favorable ground for planting in Azerbaijan as a the state policy, the cult of hatred towards Armenians and the unbridled propaganda of xenophobia, intolerance and militarism. Azeri aggression against Artsakh in April 2016, which was accompanied by war crimes against civilians and soldiers of the Defense Army, demonstrated that the methods and approaches of the Azeri side remained unchanged", notes the comment of the Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Artsakh.