The Killing Zone

"Don't believe the reports that only 50 have died. The number is not less than 1,000."

"They raped 90-year-old women and flung children from balconies."

"This is no ethnic clash. It is genocide."

"It shouldn't be called perestroika ((restructuring)). It should be called perestrelka ((cross fire))."

Or perhaps grazhdanskaya voina -- civil war. That certainly was how the hostilities were seen by the 13,000 Armenians who were forced to flee their homes in the embattled southern republic of Azerbaijan last week, first crossing the Caspian Sea by ferry to Turkmenistan, then flying on to Moscow or the Armenian capital of Yerevan. Many of those who landed in Moscow huddled around the building that houses Armenia's representational office, transforming the quiet street into an encampment of shock, grief and rage. As a refugee put it, "What civilized country would allow its own people to be murdered?"

Moscow's failure to grasp the potency of the ethnic antagonisms in Azerbaijan became shockingly apparent as festering tensions between Armenians and Azerbaijanis erupted into the worst known outbreak of violence in the Soviet Union since World War II. But what began as an ethnic blood feud quickly turned into a popular revolt against Soviet rule.

In the Azerbaijani capital of Baku, crowds blockaded the Communist Party headquarters and the republic's television studio, while impassioned speakers called for the secession of Azerbaijan and its reunification with regions of northern Iran in a single Islamic state. Demonstrators aligned with a group identified as the National Front Defense Committee used buses and trucks to barricade streets and keep troops from entering the city. Along the southern frontier with Iran, the scene of nationalist protests earlier this month, thousands of Azerbaijanis illegally crossed to the other side and staged rallies calling for a joint struggle to liberate Nagorno-Karabakh.

After hesitating for four days, the Kremlin was finally compelled, in the words of the official news agency TASS, "to take the measure of last resort" and declare a state of emergency. Early Saturday morning, Soviet troops stormed the center of Baku in tanks and armored cars, smashing through makeshift barricades of buses and trucks. The troops exchanged fire with extremists, armed with submachine guns and sniper rifles. Eyewitnesses described streets awash with "pools of blood" and corpses strewn on the road to the highway; there were even unconfirmed reports that Soviet tanks had opened fire on the demonstrators.

Popular Front activists put the minimum death toll at 120, but during a hastily called press conference in Moscow, First Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh claimed that 40 civilians and eight soldiers had been killed. The troops moved quickly to secure party headquarters and the republic's television studio, while military officials appealed over the radio for order. The Popular Front responded by calling for three days of mourning and a three-day strike in an effort to mobilize the public against the state of emergency. A fragile calm settled over the city, but neither side pretended that peace would last for long.