From: zuma!sera@NET.BIO.NET (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: Crime and punishment/CH(G)...
Date: 28 Jan 93 01:22:41 GMT
Reply-To: "soc.culture.soviet via ListServ" <SCS-L@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU>
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish

In article <1993Jan24.003632.29866@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu>
 viznyuk@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu (Sergei Viznyuk) writes:

>the situation maybe no different now.. I have
>heard that only for the last half a year, more
>than 10,000 Azerbajdzhanis moved to Moscow from
>their independent homeland. Naturally, the

Ovizzy. Wanna hear some caroling?


Source: The Times, 2 March 1992

CORPSES LITTER HILLS IN KARABAKH

ANATOL LIEVEN COMES UNDER FIRE WHILE FLYING WITH AZERBAIJANI FORCES TO
INVESTIGATE THE ALLEGED MASS KILLINGS OF REFUGEES BY ARMENIAN TROOPS...

As we swooped low over the snow-covered hills of Nagorno-Karabagh we saw
the scattered corpses. Apparently, the refugees had been shot down as
they ran. An Azerbaijani film of the places we flew over, shown to
journalists afterwards, showed DOZENS OF CORPSES lying in various parts
of the hills.

The Azerbaijanis claim that AS MANY AS 1000 have died in a MASS KILLING
of AZERBAIJANIS fleeing from the town of Khodjaly, seized by Armenians
last week. A further 4,000 are believed to be wounded, frozen to death
or missing...

Seven of us squatted in the cabin of an Azerbaijani M24 attack helicopter
as we flew to investigate the claims of the mass killings. Suddenly there
was a thump against the underside of the aircraft, a red flash of tracer
ripped past the starboard wing, and the helicopter rocked sharply. We
swung round, and there was a deafening burst of fire from the cannon
under our wing as the helicopter crew returned fire.

We had been fired on from an Armenian anti-aircraft post. We swung round
again, tipped to starboard and appeared to dive straight down into a
valley. The brown earth swooped around our heads, the helicopter swung
round again and followed the contours of the ground. Our cannon fired
repeated blasts.

Later it emerged that a civilian helicopter that we had been escorting
had landed successfully at Nakhichevanik in the east of the disputed
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, to pick up some of the dead. We had, in
fact, been attacked both by ground fire and by an Armenian helicopter.
I had seen the Armenian helicopter intermittently through the window,
its cannons firing, but had thought - mistakenly - that it was on
"our side". Our group of Western journalists had embarked on a
search-and-rescue flight that had become a combat mission.

Our flight consisted of the civilian passenger helicopter and two
M24 Soviet attack helicopters in the Azerbaijani service, nicknamed
flying crocodiles for their armour. Our party was in the second
crocodile. The civilian helicopter's job was to land in the mountains
and pick up bodies at sites of the mass killings. The attack helicopters
were there to give covering fire if necessary.

The operation showed a striking sign of the disintegration of the Soviet
armed forces because our pilot was a Russian officer. An Azerbaijani
official told us that there were now five former Soviet military
helicopters -and their pilots- fighting for Azerbaijan. "They have
signed contracts to fly for us," he said. The helicopter we engaged
in combat was most probably flown by a brother-officer of our Russian
pilot, but fighting for the Armenians.

We had taken off just before 5pm on Saturday from Agdam airfield, an
heated for the Armenian-controlled mountains of Karabakh, a sheer
white wall in the distance. The civilian helicopter picked up four
corpses, and it was during this and a previous mission that an
Azerbaijani cameraman filmed the several the several dozen bodies
on the hillsides. We then took off again in a hurry and speed back
towards Azerbaijani lines. Azerbaijani gunners on the last hill before
the plain - and safety - gazed up at us as we passed.

Back at the airfield in Agdam, we took a look the bodies the
civilian helicopter had picked up. Two old men a small girl were
covered with blood, their limbs contorted by the cold and rigor
mortis. They had been shot.

What did our Russian pilot think of the tragedy, our close shave,
and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh? He gave us CHEERFUL GRIN, POLITELY
DECLINED TO ANSWER QUES TIONS, AND MARCHED OFF TO HIS DINNER.

Serdar Argic

                           'We closed the roads and mountain passes that
                            might serve as ways of escape for the Turks
                            and then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                       (Ohanus Appressian)
                           'In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists
                            a single Turkish soul.'    (Sahak Melkonian)