Troops Kill 1, Wound 7 in Armenian Enclave : Soviet Union: The clash in Nagorno-Karabakh reflects growing animosity between the local population and soldiers trying to keep the peace.

Soviet troops opened fire on a crowd of Armenians in the violence-ridden territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, officials said Wednesday. One man was reported killed and seven wounded.

The clash, which took place Tuesday night, reflected the growing animosity between the local population and troops sent by Moscow in January to patrol the area. It brought to 118 the number of people killed in the last 20 months, most of them in fighting between ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

“Increasingly, you are seeing anger between Azerbaijanis and Armenians directed instead at Moscow, and the troops are an obvious target for that,” said a Western diplomat who monitors the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“For their part, the troops have been increasingly demoralized by their inability to stop the bloodshed there. So this kind of violence between the people and the soldiers was really inevitable.”

Tuesday’s clash followed an incident last month in which Azerbaijanis seized three Soviet generals and briefly held them hostage.

In addition, Armenian activists in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, have said they have lost confidence in the soldiers sent from Moscow and have established vigilante groups to protect themselves against possible Azerbaijani attack.

Three-quarters of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population of 165,000 are Armenians--most of them Christians--and many are demanding that the enclave be removed from the predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan republic and made a part of Soviet Armenia.

The dispute erupted in violence in February, 1988, and dozens of people were killed in waves of ethnic rioting in the two republics.

In Tuesday night’s clash, according to Yuri M. Arshenevsky, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, six soldiers were injured when soldiers crossing a bridge into Stepanakert were confronted by an enraged mob.

Arshenevsky said the crowd of Armenians began throwing rocks and then firing on the troops with hunting rifles, forcing the troops to return their fire in self-defense.

But this version was disputed by an Armenian legislator, Ashot Manucharyan, who said in a telephone interview that most of the crowd converged at the bridge only after the troops fired warning shots and a signal flare into the sky. He said none of the civilians had fired.

Arshenevsky said eight civilians were wounded in the confrontation, and Manucharyan said that one of them died later in a hospital.

Hambartsum Galstyan, a member of the so-called Karabakh Committee, which is made up largely of Armenian intellectuals demanding independence for the enclave, also said that one of the eight wounded had died. Galstyan charged that the Soviet troops had fired on a peaceful crowd.

Moscow’s efforts to bring calm to Nagorno-Karabakh through the presence of troops and a special commission to run the region has not worked, Western analysts said.

Armenians and Azerbaijanis living in the region have continued to fight each other with homemade weapons and guns obtained illicitly.

Soviet television reported earlier this week that a large cache of weapons and ammunition had been found on board a helicopter chartered by Armenians to fly supplies into Nagorno-Karabakh.

Food and fuel supplies have diminished steadily, and a diplomatic source said Wednesday that the region is beset by a hepatitis epidemic that has spread because of the lack of medical supplies.

According to figures kept by independent Western analysts, 118 people have been killed in the 20 months since trouble flared in Nagorno-Karabakh, 1,000 people have been injured and more than 2,000 homes have been destroyed.

Meanwhile, a rail blockade of Armenia that Azerbaijani activists had promised to end appeared to be continuing Wednesday.

Local Azerbaijani officials and the Azerbaijani Popular Front had signed a pledge to stop preventing trains from reaching Armenia. But Armenian officials said cars loaded with fuel and food were being derailed before they reached Armenia.

Some officials said that fuel tankers were arriving filled with water. They said that Azerbaijanis, including women and children, were lying across railroad tracks to prevent cars loaded with goods from reaching Armenia.

Azerbaijani activists say the blockade started Sept. 4, but Armenian officials say goods virtually stopped arriving by rail nearly three months ago.

Background

Nagorno-Karabakh has a predominantly Christian Armenian population but was administered by mostly Muslim Azerbaijan until February, when growing tensions prompted Moscow to impose direct rule. The ethnic Armenians, claiming to be the victims of discrimination, demanded that the region be declared part of Soviet Armenia. The Kremlin fears that the 20-month-old feud over control of the enclave appears to be edging closer to civil war.