Several Killed in Rioting in Azerbaijan, Soviets Say

The Soviet Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that several people were killed in ethnic rioting in the industrial city of Sumgait before army troops could be mobilized and a curfew imposed.

Gennady I. Gerasimov, the ministry’s chief spokesman, told reporters that life in Sumgait, a city of more than 160,000 people in the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, is returning to normal after Sunday’s clashes between Azerbaijanis and Armenians.

He said he did not know the number of dead or their nationality, and he added that specific details will be made public later.

Last weekend, a Moscow official reported after a trip to the Azerbaijan republic that two people had been killed in clashes there, but Gerasimov’s statement indicated a higher toll.

Gerasimov read from an article in the Baku Worker, a newspaper published in the capital of Azerbaijan: “The unrest has been stopped. Businesses and establishments of trade and public eating are working in a normal rhythm, and classes are taking place in schools and other educational establishments. Order and peace have been ensured by law enforcement organs. People caught in the unrest have been detained.”

Disorder in the area, more than 1,000 miles south of Moscow in Transcaucasia, erupted in mid-February when officials in Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous region within Azerbaijan, moved to seek reunification with the neighboring Soviet republic of Armenia. Massive demonstrations took place in Nagorno-Karabakh and in Yerevan, the Armenian capital.

Moscow-based foreign journalists were barred from the region.

Baku Radio said Wednesday that official assistance is being given to Azerbaijanis who fled from Armenia at the height of the demonstrations in Yerevan.

Number Not Determined

The broadcast said the number of Azerbaijanis who fled has not been determined, but it said they will be given help in getting back to their homes in Armenia.

Western diplomatic observers said the fatalities present serious problems for Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. His policy of glasnost , or public openness, has encouraged the airing of dormant disputes among minority nationalities, not only in Transcaucasia but in the Baltic states as well.

Some analysts suggested that Gorbachev, by intervening personally and promising a “just solution,” may have given the impression that he is yielding to a minority pressure group.

Armenian leaders have hailed the outpouring of demonstrators as an example of democracy, but Gorbachev has characterized the incidents as cause for “serious concern.”

Gorbachev reportedly told two Armenian representatives he met with last week, both writers, that they had stabbed his reform program in the back by taking to the streets rather than making a more conventional appeal.

But Armenian spokesmen complained that a petition with more than 70,000 signatures had been brushed aside by Communist Party leaders and that their letters of protest had gone unanswered. The petition sought the return to Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was once a part of Armenia but was declared an autonomous region in 1923.