Death Toll 18 in 5 Days in Soviet Ethnic Unrest

Rioting gangs have seized weapons from police and troops in the Black Sea region of Abkhazia where the death toll climbed to 18 in five days of ethnic violence, the official news agency Tass said Wednesday.

Tass said the clashes were continuing--despite the imposition of a state of emergency in the area--between ethnic Georgians and Abkhazians. Groups of about 100 people in cars were attacking Interior Ministry troops called in to quell the violence, it said.

The roving mobs were attacking troops and citizens “for the purpose of seizing arms and ammunition,” the news agency said, adding such attacks “have become commonplace.”

Tass said the latest fatality was a police officer shot with a hunting rifle on the road to Sukhumi, the region’s capital.

State of Emergency

Abkhazia’s legislature declared the state of emergency, including a curfew, shortly before midnight Tuesday. It also said troops were trying to disarm the rioters.

Soviet news reports in recent days have portrayed a region gripped by mob violence, with widespread sniper attacks, kidnapings, beatings, lootings and gunfights.

Abkhazians are a minority in their homeland, a 3,320-square-mile autonomous region within Georgia. Georgians outnumber Abkhazians 240,000 to 90,000 in the region, but both sides claim discrimination by the other.

The wave of violence has closed most of the Sukhumi’s factories, caused food and fuel shortages and paralyzed public transportation, Tass said.

An Abkhazian official said the rioting was touched off by new rules that would split the state university in Sukhumi into Georgian and Abkhazian sections.

For months, Abkhazians have been pressing for their region to secede from Georgia and become the 16th Soviet republic, giving it more political and economic autonomy.