The World - News from July 12, 1989

A group of Azerbaijanis were ambushed, apparently by Armenians, and two were shot and killed as ethnic strife flared again in the troubled southern Soviet region of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Soviet news agency Tass reported. A third Azerbaijani was seriously injured in the attack near the village of Kirkidzhan. In a separate incident, soldiers trying to clear roads around Stepanakert, the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh, were pelted by stones and shot at with hunting rifles, and 19 suffered injuries, Tass said. Nagorno-Karabakh is predominantly Armenian and Christian, although it is located within the predominantly Muslim republic of Azerbaijan.