Azerbaijanis Attack Armenians; 25 People Reported Killed in Baku
Rioting broke out overnight in the capital of the Azerbaijan republic after calls were made to drive out minority Armenians, and official media Sunday said at least 25 people died, most of them Armenians.
A witness described a street awash in blood and said the victims included two women tossed from balconies and one shot point-blank in the head and chest.
It was the deadliest clash in nearly two years between Azerbaijanis and Armenians, who are locked in a feud over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave populated mainly by Armenians but which is controlled by Azerbaijan.
Most Armenians are Christians; most Azerbaijanis are Shiite Moslems.
The violence reportedly spurred calls for Armenians with weapons to volunteer to protect their breathren.
The rampage apparently was set off by news that an Azerbaijani had been killed and another wounded by Armenians in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku.
Radio Moscow said the incidents were announced at a rally Saturday night in Baku’s central square that was attended by about 150,000 people.
“Calls were made at the rally to drive the Armenians out of the city,” the Radio Moscow correspondent reported from the Caspian Sea port of 1.7 million people. “Among the crowd, anti-Armenian slogans were shouted, and then the most terrible thing of all began – the pogroms.”
In the ensuing violence, the official Tass news agency said 25 people were killed. Radio Moscow said 26 people were wounded and quoted local Interior Ministry officials as saying most victims were Armenians.
Tass said there were more than 50 “pogroms,” or ethnically motivated attacks.
A Russian resident of Baku told The Associated Press by telephone she saw at least two Armenian women in torn, blood-spattered clothes hurled from the balconies of upper floors of apartment houses on Lenin Street.
In front of the office, she said, an old woman who looked like an Armenian was shot point-blank in the head and chest by a mob armed with shotguns and pistols.
“You can’t imagine, I’ve just seen death for the first time in my life,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified by name for fear she would become the target of reprisals. She said Lenin Street was covered with blood.
About 20,000 ethnic Armenians, mainly elderly people, live in Baku, although ethnic violence in the last two years has caused an exodus of Azerbaijans and Armenians back to their home republics.
Alexander Argumanyan, a press officer for the Armenian National Movement, said at least 250,000 people gathered in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, Sunday after hearing of the violence.
He said Vano Syragedlyan, a member of the movement’s directorate, urged Armenians who own firearms to volunteer to be flown by helicopter to two districts of Azerbaijan near the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Radio Moscow said the strife was kindled in Baku, a major petroleum-producing center, when two Azerbaijanis visited an Armenian family at midday and demanded they leave town. The Armenians had an ax, and the Azerbaijanis were hurt in a struggle and taken to a hospital.
One died and the other was in serious condition, the radio said.
The news enflamed the crowd that gathered later in Baku.
Alesker Siyabov, a spokesman for the Azerbaijani People’s Front, said the rally voted to establish a “council for national security” designed to protect Azerbaijanis.
Radio Moscow said police had 1,500 men on patrol.
“It was not possible to avert so many sad and tragic cases. But in dozens of cases, the militia (police) saved people,” the Baku correspondent said. In other cases, he said, Azerbaijanis saved Armenian neighbors by sheltering them.
Radio Moscow said 53 apartments, presumably those of Armenians, were wrecked in the violence and that the situation in the city, 1,240 miles southeast of Moscow, remained tense.
“Operational bulletins constantly contain reports about hostages being taken, both Armenians and Azerbaijanis, about exchanges of fire, about tragic events,” the Radio Moscow reporter said.
“The republic is on the boil. Hearts are bleeding and the militia is trying to do everything it can.”
He said he had been told that reinforcements were on the way. “But what guarantee is there that the frightful thing which took place yesterday evening and last night will not be repeated?”
A duty officer at the Azerbaijani Communist Party’s Central Committee, Kamal Abdulayev, said the number of victims was unclear. He repeated charges made at the rally Saturday that Armenians in helicopters were firing on Azerbaijani villages in a district near Nagorno-Karabakh.
The duty officer at the republic’s Interior Ministry, which is responsible for law enforcement, said Baku “was and is normal.” He hung up before he could be asked his name.
Azerbaijani People’s Front spokesman Khalid Mukhtarov denied knowing of any rioting. When told that Pravda, the Communist Party daily, had printed the Tass dispatch about the hooligan rampages, he charged that the newspaper always printed lies about Azerbaijan.
In Nagorno-Karabakh itself, violence also continued, with the special Interior Ministry troops who have been sent in to preserve order now becoming targets of attack, Tass said.
On Saturday, in a village populated by Armenians and Azerbaijanis, a barracks was sprayed with machine-gun fire and a private in the Interior Ministry forces, M. Mantaev, was mortally wounded, Tass said.
The previous day, it was reported that Lt. I. Tsymbalyuk of the Interior Ministry was shot and killed in the Azerbaijani-populated village of Akhullu, apparently by an Azerbaijani policeman.
The Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute is the bloodiest of the many ethnic conflicts facing Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
The worst rioting occurred in February 1988, when Azerbaijanis attacked Armenians in the city of Sumgait, near Baku. Thirty-two people died, most of them Armenians.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory of about 160,000 people, has been controlled by Azerbaijan since 1923.
Last week, Azerbaijan resumed a railway blocade of Armenia, which gets most of its supplies through Azerbaijan, as part of its campaign for full control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In addition to Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijanis also have rioted over demands they be united with their Shiite Moslem breathren in the neighboring Iranian Azerbaijani region. Over the New Year’s holiday weekend, Azerbaijani rioters tore down border fences and put guard towers and communications lines out of commission.