Azerbaijanis Archives

A 15-year-old witness of the October 10 terrorist attack in Ankara told the police that the alleged suicide bombers spoke with each other in Azerbaijani, Turkish newspaper Milliyet reports, according to the Azerbaijani information portal Modern.az.

The witness, a female whose name is not revealed, told the police that the terrorist attack suspects first went to the restroom by the mosque. Then two women in hijabs went out from it, while four people remained inside. The girl says there were Azerbaijanis among those terrorists because those four people spoke in Azerbaijani and Kurdish.

She says the terrorists wrapped the bomb in a black piece of cloth, and one of the women tied it to herself. They also had bags.

“When we saw them, me and my friend, we went out. I told the police about those people but they did not listen to me. Four people remained inside, and another four were in the street. They all went in the same direction. They were ‘living bombs.’ One of them blew up behind, another – in the pool, the third one blew up in the crowd among the activists of the Peoples’ Democratic Party. The rest of the terrorists picked up the pieces of the exploded human bodies and smeared their faces and hands with their blood. The terrorists threw a bomb on my friend. He was torn to pieces. His head fell at my feet,” the girl recalls.

After the October 10 terrorist attack in Turkey, the names of 21 members of the IS group, who were wanted for a long time, again appeared on the agenda. According to the outlet, there is an Azerbaijani woman, Ulker Mammadova, wanted in Turkey, in the list of the six women in the group, who could have become the “living bombs.”

Commenting on the information that there is an Azerbaijani citizen in the Turkey intelligence list of potential IS kamikazes, political scientist Tofig Abbasov told Sputnik Azerbaijan that the Azerbaijanis’ presence in the IS is not a secret any more.

Kamil Salimov, an Azerbaijani expert on fight against terrorism, told Oxu.az that the people taking part in the terrorist activities of the IS can come back to their country where they have connections and resources to carry out any terrorist attack, and expose the society and the whole country to a great danger. This is a matter of concern, the expert highlighted.

The relationship between international terrorist groups and Azerbaijan originated in the early 1990s. That time, the Azerbaijani army, having failed in the aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), retreated with losses. Trying to save the situation, the Azerbaijani leadership, headed by Heydar Aliyev attracted to the war against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh international terrorists and members of radical groups from Afghanistan (groupings of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar), Turkey (“Grey Wolves”, etc.), Chechnya (groupings Basayev and Raduyev etc.) and some other regions.

Despite the involvement of thousands of foreign mercenaries and terrorists in the Azerbaijani army during the war, the Azerbaijani aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh Republic failed, and the Baku authorities were forced to sign an armistice with the NKR and Armenia. However, international terrorists established ties in Azerbaijan, and used them in the future. The Azerbaijanis were recruited and sent to Afghanistan and the North Caucasus, where they participated in the battles against the forces of the international coalition and Russian organizations. Over the recent years, the citizens of Azerbaijan have been actively engaged in terrorism and extremist activities in Russia, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.