(MENAFN- AzerNews) By Vugar Khalilov
International representatives have visited Aghdam and Tartar regions to monitor Armenia's vandalism acts committed during the three-decade Occupation of Azerbaijani territories.
On October 27, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Azerbaijan, Guido Ambroso, visited Aghdam.
"Today, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Azerbaijan Guido Ambroso and the delegation headed by him visited Aghdam, where they saw with their own eyes the territories destroyed as a result of Armenian vandalism," the Azerbaijani president's special representative in Aghdam, Emin Huseynov, wrote on his Twitter account.
On October 26, Azerbaijani Human Rights Commissioner Sabina Aliyeva and head of Bulgaria's Commission for Protection against Discrimination Ana Jumaliyeva had on-site investigations in Aghdam and Tartar cities, the ombudsman office reported.
As a part of international cooperation, the delegation monitored civilian settlements, social infrastructures, historic and religious monuments in Aghdam, which had been destructed and looted by Armenia over the past 30 years, the report added.
The officials visited the Juma and Giyasli mosques in Aghdam to see the scale of destructions and desecration of religious monuments by Armenia during the occupation.
The representatives also inspected the mausoleum of Panahali Khan and the Bread Museum. They were informed about the facilities' historical background and deliberate destruction of Azerbaijan's historical and cultural heritage in the liberated lands.
Later, the delegation continued its on-site investigations in Tartar city, where civilian settlements and houses had come under heavy artillery attacks during the 44-day war with Armenia in 2020.
The human rights defenders witnessed the graves in the Tartar city cemetery destroyed by Armenian shellings.
The delegation was informed about the missiles that Armenia launched on civilian facilities in Tartar during the war.
It should be noted that Armenia's aggression and illegal occupation caused irreparable damages to Azerbaijan's cultural heritage, which includes thousands of cultural values, including monuments of the world and national importance, mosques, temples, mausoleums, museums, art galleries, sites of archaeological excavations, libraries and rare manuscripts.
Sixty-four of 67 mosques and Islamic religious sites were destroyed, greatly damaged, and desecrated.
More than 900 cemeteries were destroyed and vandalized. The evidence of illegal "archaeological excavations" and so-called "restoration work" was found on the liberated Azerbaijani territories, confirming previous reports of Armenia's attempts to hide and falsify cultural, historical and scientific evidence.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said that hundreds of cultural institutions, 927 libraries with a book fund of 4.6 million, 22 museums and museum branches with more than 100,000 exhibits, 4 art galleries, 8 culture, and recreation parks, as well as one of the oldest settlements in the world in Fuzuli region - Azykh Cave, the Shusha State Historical and Architectural Reserve had become victims of the Armenian vandalism.
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