Killings Reported in Romania as Forces Fire on Demonstrators

Dozens of anti-government demonstrators may have been killed by security forces in Romania, the first deaths in the wave of uprisings against Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

A Yugoslav witness said today that security forces--some firing rifles and from helicopters--crushed a protest by 10,000 people who took to the streets Sunday shouting “Freedom!” and “Down with Ceausescu!”

“Hundreds of people were falling on the pavement in front of my eyes,” Radislav Dencic, a student at Timisoara, where the protest occurred, told reporters when he returned to Yugoslavia from the Transylvanian city today.

Dencic estimated dozens were killed and said he personally saw three corpses, including that of a little child wrapped in white linen, lying in the street.

He said smoke poured from the city’s police headquarters, apparently after it was attacked in the toughest protest in two years against the government of President Nicolae Ceausescu.

First details filtering out in Yugoslav and Hungarian media of the protest in one of Europe’s most rigid Communist states spoke of many injuries and arrests.

Timisoara was sealed off by army tanks and other armored vehicles, the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said. Romania closed its borders.