 Then I was told, as I hadn't seen it myself, there was a woman literally ripped in half...

On January 20, 1990, after the Armenian population was already expelled from the city, the Soviet troops intervened in Baku and a state of martial law was declared.This however did not accomplish its officially stated goal of quelling the violence as most Armenians fled Baku.By the end of April 1993, it was estimated that  only 18–20,000 Armenians remained in Baku, mostly in hiding.