Today is Shushi Liberation Day (video)

Exactly 21 years ago, on the night of May 9, the Armenian forces launched an operation to liberate Shushi.

The Capture of Shushi, referred to as the Liberation of Shushi by Armenians and Occupation of Shushi by Azerbaijanis was the first significant military victory by Armenian forces during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. The battle took place in the strategically important mountain town of Shushi on the evening of May 8, 1992, and fighting swiftly concluded the following day after Armenian forces captured and drove out the defending Azeris. Armenian military commanders based in Nagorno-Karabakh's capital of Stepanakert had been contemplating the capture of the town after a hail of Azeri military bombardment had begun shelling that city.

The seizure of the town proved decisive. Shushi was the most important military stronghold that Azerbaijan held in Nagorno-Karabakh – its loss marked a turning point in the war, and led to a series of military victories by Armenian forces in the course of the conflict. However some of the shelling was, according to the accounts of former residents, either indiscriminate or intentionally aimed at civilian targets.

In February 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh had been an autonomous oblast for over seventy years inside the borders of the Azerbaijan SSR. Following its government's decision to secede from Azerbaijan and unify with Armenia, the conflict erupted into a larger scale ethnic feud between Armenians and Azeris living in the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Armenians and Azeris vied to take control of Karabakh with full scale battles taking place in the winter of 1992. By then, the enclave had declared its independence and set up an unrecognized, though self-functioning government.

The advanced weaponry of tanks, armored fighting vehicles, fighter jets and helicopter gunships bought and used by both sides illustrated the aftereffects of the free-for-all weapons vacuum created upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union. A large scale population shift had also been in effect since the conflict began with most of the Armenians living in Azerbaijan and Azeris in Armenia trading places. The battle was preceded by the controversial capture of the town and the location of Karabakh's only airport in Khojaly by Armenians in February 1992. With the loss of Khojaly, Azeri commanders had been redirecting the rest of their firepower upon Stepanakert from the ridge on Shushi.