BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 5.Aghdam was not destroyed during the first Karabakh war. It was destroyed after for almost 30 years, stone by stone, President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the First Azerbaijan National Urban Forum in Aghdam city, Trend reports.
"All the buildings have been ruined and dismantled. Stones have been stolen and sold out. You may see the only half destroyed building was a building of Juma Mosque, but the reason why it was not destroyed along with other mosques which Armenians destroyed in the former occupied territories was that they were using the minarets for observation to see potential movement of Azerbaijani armed forces. But we have video and photo evidences of desecration of Aghdam Mosque, where Armenians kept pigs and cows in the mosque. Total 65 out of 67 mosques which existed on the liberated territories were totally destroyed. Two of them, one here and one in Shusha were half destroyed and desecrated. What you see here in Aghdam you can see in every single village of Karabakh area. I know that our guests came here by plane to newly-built Fuzuli Airport. So, Fuzuli city is totally destroyed, not a single building, Jabrayil is the same. Qubadli, Zangilan are the same. The only places where not all the buildings have been destroyed were Shusha, Lachin and partly Kalbajar. But the reason for that was that the Armenian state was conducting a policy of illegal settlement of Armenians from different countries to settle on the occupied territories and this is considered to be a brutal violation of international law and Geneva conventions. So now, we are facing a tremendous challenge to return as soon as possible former refugees and IDPs to their homeland. But one of the biggest complications apart from a large-scale reconstruction program are landmines. Since the war ended two years ago, almost two years ago, we have almost 250 Azerbaijanis who have been killed or seriously injured as a result of landmine explosions. Unfortunately, the figure is growing every week. Just last week we had two killed and three seriously injured. Armenians have planted more than one million mines during the times of occupation. And this policy of terror against Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijanis continues," the head of state said.