LAUSD board votes to add new holiday honoring victims of Armenian Genocide

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The Los Angeles Unified School District board has voted to add a new holiday honoring the 1.5 million people killed in the Armenian Genocide.

LAUSD schools will have April 24 off to observe Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

Some 1.5 million Armenians died in mass killings in Ottoman Turkey beginning in 1915, which Armenia and many other countries have labeled a genocide. Turkey firmly rejects that term, contends the total number of victims is inflated and says the deaths were the consequence of civil war.

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The mass killings of more than a million Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago were genocide, the Senate declared in December 2019 in a vote that prompted angry denunciations by Turkey and accusations that the U.S. was undermining its relations with a key NATO ally.

The Senate action followed a vote by a Senate committee to impose sanctions on Turkey after its offensive in Syria and purchase of a Russian S-400 missile system.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.