At about 1 a.m. on October 17, ballistic missiles hit two residential neighborhoods in Ganja, killing 21 civilians, including five who had died of their wounds after the attack as of November 6, according to residents and official sources.
One missile, which ANAMA identified as a Scud-B, hit the residential Mukhtar Hajiev Street. Human Rights Watch interviewed 13 residents who were at home at the time of attack, and observed 10 houses destroyed and over 20 damaged at the site. Shaira Guliyeva, 47, whose home was next to the impact crater said: We found our neighbor’s leg in what used to be our kitchen. [Someone’s] intestines were found on a telephone wire. Two children were killed in a neighboring house – their bedroom was completely destroyed, so the family could not even recover the bodies.
Guliyeva said that her nephew, Arthur Guliyev, 13, had to be dug out after the attack and died a week later and that her sister, Gulnara, was seriously injured and remained in the hospital as of November 6. She said that flying debris also injured her and her mother.
Fakhriya Aliyeva, 20, whose house was destroyed, said her neighbors Zuleiha Shakhnazarova and Royal Shakhnazarov and their 16-month-old daughter Madina Shakhnazarli were killed, leaving their 3-year-old daughter in her grandparents’ care. Aliyeva said Madina’s “body was found under the debris of their house and her mother’s [severed] head was found in the courtyard.”
Timur Sarkarov said the explosion destroyed his father’s home, killing his father, sister, brother, and two nieces and leaving three survivors wounded and traumatized, including another brother, who lost his hearing.
Ramiz Gahramanov was home when the strike killed his daughter, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons, ages 6 and 11, and destroyed his two-story home. After the attack, he said he had to identify his family from pieces of their hair and body parts.
Mahir Bagirov, 55 and Bahar Bagirova, 53, had lived at their house with their daughter Ilaha Hamzayeva and her three children, ages 9, 7, and 2, when it was destroyed in the attack. Hamzayeva, 29, said that each night since the attack, she “cannot stop shaking” and her toddler “barely eats anything… [and] keeps saying ‘Mama, bomb.’”
Almost simultaneously with the attack on Mukhtar Hajiev Street, a second Scud-B missile hit the Avtozavod neighborhood on Suleyman Rustem primary road. The attack destroyed or left uninhabitable 15 family homes and damaged 40 to 50 others, residents said. Human Rights Watch observed a large crater and dozens of damaged or destroyed residential buildings and munition remnants scattered at the blast site on November 7, and other missile remnants at the ANAMA headquarters in Baku on November 4.
Human Rights Watch interviewed nine Avtozavod neighborhood residents, including Farhad Heydarov, 64, who showed his house with destroyed doors, windows, and roof and pointed out a building where he said a woman named Maral and her granddaughter were killed. Basti Jafarova, 62, said she was treated in the same hospital room where Maral died.
Jafarova’s 10 family members suffered cuts after the blast, which tore off their roof. Two members of the extended Mammadov family said that the explosion destroyed three homes where they and nine other family members lived, and killed two relatives, Elman Mammadov, 52, and his sister-in-law Aybaniz Mammadova, 40. Azad Jafarov, 30, said the explosion destroyed her house and embedded pieces of a plastic window frame in her body, causing “horrible pain.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/11/armenia-unlawful-rocket-missile-strikes-azerbaijan
