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The Armenian National Assembly kicked off its regular session on Wednesday with a moment of silence as a tribute to the memory of Armenians killed during the 1988 Sumgait pogroms perpetrated by Azerbaijan.

“Thirty years ago today hundreds of Armenians were brutally killed in the Armenian-populated city of Sumgait in Azerbaijan in a state-sponsored crime. The mass killings perpetrated by the Azerbaijani authorities were aimed at intimidating Armenians with a new crime of genocide and making them abandon the national-liberation movement,” Speaker Ara Babloyan said.

The Armenian official stressed that the atrocities, plotted and committed against Armenians by the Azerbaijani authorities 30 years ago, regrettably, have not received a proper legal and political assessment to date on the international platforms.

“The failure to condemn [the pogroms] encouraged Azerbaijan to further carry out ethnic cleansing and massacres also in Baku, Kirovabad (Gandzak), Maragha and many other Armenian-populated settlements in Azerbaijan,” he said.