Some 50,000 Azerbaijanis marched through Baku on Sunday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of one of the bloodiest incidents of the country's war with Armenian forces over disputed Nagorny Karabakh. The Azerbaijani authorities say that 613 people died when Armenian troops attacked the village of Khojaly in Karabakh in 1992 in what Baku describes as "genocide", although Yerevan strongly rejects this.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was among the marchers, who carried placards with slogans like "Recognise the Khojaly genocide" and "The genocides in Khojaly, Srebrenica, Rwanda and Homs must not be repeated".
Posters with the names of those who died were displayed along the route of the march, which ended with a wreath-laying ceremony.
Baku has stepped up efforts to raise international awareness of Khojaly amid its continuing campaign to regain control over Karabakh, which Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized from Azerbaijan in during a 1990s war that left some 30,000 people dead.
Aliyev alleged in a statement to mark the anniversary on Friday that Armenia had "repeatedly committed crimes against humanity such as terrorism, mass extermination, deportation and ethnic cleansing of our people".
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