Armenia marks 105th anniversary of genocide

Armenia's president and prime minister on Friday marked 105 years since the start of the Armenian genocide in a solemn commemoration in Yerevan.

Armenia has sharply curtailed this year's commemoration due to concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus.

This year, only the President, Prime Minister, Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia and the Catholicos of All Armenians visited the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial to lay flowers.

24 April 1915 is recognised as the official starting date of Armenia's horrors, in which 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottomans.

The relentless campaign of eradication actually lasted some eight years.

Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan called on the international community to continue the process of recognition of the genocide.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by genocide scholars as to the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey, a successor of the Ottoman Empire, denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.