Troops Act as Buffer Against Muslims, He Says After Visit : Sacramento Priest Reports High Armenian Toll

As many as 80 Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Soviet Union have been killed and others have been brutalized at the hands of Muslim villagers, and Soviet troops have been called in to protect them, an Armenian Apostolic Church priest said here Sunday night.

The report was made by the Rev. Sasoon Zumrookhdian, who returned to the state capital Saturday after spending 10 days in the strife-torn capital of Soviet Armenia, Yerevan.

News accounts from the Soviet Union have alluded to “victims” during the last 10 days of civil strife in Armenia. And a Soviet prosecutor on Sunday disclosed that there have been two deaths in the region. But Zumrookhdian’s report appeared to be the first direct account of deaths in large numbers.

Reports From Refugees

In an interview, Zumrookhdian said he was meeting on Feb. 20 with Catholicos Vazken I, the spiritual leader of the Armenian Orthodox Church, when a small group of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh arrived in Yerevan “with grave reports.”

On behalf of Vazken I, Zumrookhdian said, “I received the people (from Nagorno-Karabakh). They had grave reports, such as more than 30 cars and eight buses were damaged and burned and (an empty) kindergarten was burned. There have been deaths, rapes and tortures” of Armenians, he said.

He said that estimates of deaths at the hands of people he identified as “Turks, village men,” ranged “around 50” and “some say 80,” adding that he was told that “over 100 people had been wounded.”

“It is predetermined, premeditated murder,” Zumrookhdian said, asserting that the Muslim government officials in the area “silently” supported the violence and “turned their cheeks away.”

Zumrookhdian said that Armenians under attack were fleeing to Stepanakert, a population center in Nagorno-Karabakh, and that Soviet soldiers were given orders to protect Armenians. He said the attackers were armed “with stones, bats, daggers and guns.”

Nagorno-Karabakh is an autonomous region in Azerbaijan, whose population is predominantly Muslim. However, Nagorno-Karabakh is 75% Armenian, mostly Christians. The Armenians in the region are seeking to unite Nagorno-Karabakh with neighboring Soviet Armenia. The territory was part of Armenia until Stalin ceded it to Azerbaijan in 1924.

In support of the annexation, reportedly hundreds of thousands of Armenians have demonstrated in Yerevan for a week and a half, handing Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev a serious civil crisis.

Zumrookhdian said it was widely “misunderstood” in the West that the demonstrations were aimed at the Soviet government.

“It is absolutely not against the Soviet Union,” he said of the street demonstrations, which he described as peaceful. “The issue here is the human right for self-determination as provided for in both the constitutions of the Soviet Union and Azerbaijan.”