100,000 Feared Dead in Soviet Armenia Quake : Gorbachev Flies Home From N.Y. to Direct Rescue, Relief Efforts

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, his dramatic diplomatic mission to the West cut short by disaster at home, flew back to the Soviet Union today to direct relief and rescue efforts in Armenia, devastated by a 6.9 earthquake that may have killed 100,000 people.

Gorbachev and his delegation left Kennedy International Airport aboard his Aeroflot Ilyushin-62 jet for Moscow shortly after noon.

In a farewell statement, a somber Gorbachev said, “I have to cut short this visit because late last night it was reported to me that the earthquake . . . was extremely severe and had extremely grave consequences, devastation and loss of life.”

Cuba, Britain Trips Off

His hasty departure scrubbed immediate plans to visit Cuba and Britain in the next few days and interrupted a dramatic good will tour that changed from headline-making triumph to shock and sadness that the quake had devastated several Armenian cities.

Military surgeons and tons of medical supplies were rushed to the stricken region.

Armenian journalists said a Politburo commission led by Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov was receiving preliminary estimates that up to 50,000 people died in the quake which struck the southern region at midday Wednesday.

But in London, George Kurkjian, a representative of the Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church of South Armenia, quoted church sources in Moscow as saying the death toll could reach 100,000.

Victims Airlifted Out

Soviet officials set up a “helicopter bridge” to take victims from the mountainous republic of 3.3 million people to neighboring Soviet Georgia. Official Soviet media said the earthquake wiped out villages and destroyed half of Kirovakan, a city of 170,000 people.

Tent cities for evacuees were set up throughout northwestern Armenia, which was hardest hit.

Military surgeons “are carrying out a series of difficult operations, including on children, in field conditions,” army Gen. Vladimir Arkhipov told Tass press agency. The agency said a Red Cross plane brought relief supplies, including 20,000 blood transfusion kits, to Armenia.

The earthquake wiped out Spitak, a town of 16,000 about 55 miles northwest of the Armenian capital of Yerevan, the government newspaper Izvestia said.

It said just one of the town’s eight schools remained standing.