On April 10, 1992, Azerbaijani forces carried out a complete ethnic cleansing of the peaceful Armenian-populated village of Maragha. Over 50 civilians, including 30 women, were killed by Azerbaijani armed units. Around 5,000 residents were forcibly displaced, 29 women and 9 children were taken hostage, and the fate of 19 individuals remains unknown. This was stated by Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a post on X.

On that day, a special unit of the Azerbaijani militia set fire to the village and massacred its inhabitants.

“These atrocities are well documented in reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The behavior that led to the Maragha massacre—ethnic hatred, impunity, glorification of war crimes, destruction of Armenian cultural monuments, and forced displacement—had already been observed during the anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku, and elsewhere from 1988 to 1990,” the MFA said.

“Today, as we honor the memory of the victims of the Maragha massacre, preventing such crimes and achieving lasting peace requires rejecting hate speech and promoting respect for fundamental human rights,” the statement reads.

Maragha is an Armenian-populated village in the Martakert region of the Republic of Artsakh, which has been under the control of Azerbaijani armed forces since 1992. In 1989, it had a population of 4,644, the overwhelming majority of whom were Armenian.