The World - News from July 14, 1989

People are shooting into towns and setting up roadblocks in Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory in Soviet Azerbaijan that was swept by ethnic violence last year, the official Soviet news agency Tass reported. An Armenian motorist was found shot to death on a road leading to Stepanakert, and ethnic Azerbaijanis “started a pogrom” in the city of Shusha, the agency said. Roving bands erected barriers on many roads, blocking traffic between Stepanakert, the territorial capital, and other towns, it added. The ethnic conflict stems from the fact that ethnic Armenians, most of them Christians, make up most of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population, but the region is part of mostly Muslim Azerbaijan.