Ceausescu Deposed : Romanian Chief and Wife Flee; Their Son Is Captured : An Outraged Nation Drives Dictator Out

An outraged nation today drove Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu from power, ending the Soviet Bloc’s last dictatorship, but loyalist and opposition forces battled for control in the streets of Bucharest.

Army troops siding with protesters and security forces loyal to Ceausescu fought ferocious battles into the night in the capital, Bucharest, and elsewhere in the country, East Bloc media reports said. The Presidential Palace reportedly was set ablaze.

The tumult capped a historic year of change in the Soviet Bloc that elsewhere had been relatively bloodless: Solidarity took power in Poland, Hungary ousted its hard-liners and opened its borders, and old-guard regimes in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria were thrown out in swift succession in October.

State-run Romanian media, now in the hands of protesters, reported that Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, fled by helicopter from the Presidential Palace early today but were later caught and put in detention. Another report, however, said he was free and his whereabouts unknown. Still other reports said the couple had escaped the country, possibly heading for Iran or China.

Nicu, the Ceausescus’ eldest son, was captured after trying to assume command of the security forces in Sibiu, the south Transylvanian city he had ruled as local Communist Party chief. He said on Romanian TV that he did not know his parents’ whereabouts.

About 2,000 pro-Ceausescu forces attacked Bucharest this evening, after it was taken over by hundreds of thousands of protesters, Romanian television reported.

“Dead and wounded are reported from all parts of the city,” the Czechoslovak news agency CTK said. Yugoslav TV reported hundreds dead.

“Television has appealed to everyone to remain in the streets and to fight against the murderers until the very end,” the Hungarian news agency MTI said.

The 24-year reign of the East Bloc’s harshest regime collapsed in one breathtaking week of protests that began with a small rally for a persecuted pastor in the remote western city of Timisoara, and led to today’s nationwide uprising by millions.

Thousands of unarmed civilians already were believed massacred by troops in Timisoara as Ceausescu desperately tried to prolong his rule. Security forces also fired on protesters in Bucharest on Thursday.

Soviet TV said pro-Ceausescu troops attacked at dusk today and fighting raged throughout the capital. It said troops opened fire with submachine guns on demonstrators who gathered for a meeting.

It said the Communist Party Central Committee building was partially blown up.

Earlier, Romanian radio said tanks and army units surrounded TV and radio stations to protect them from loyalist security forces.

Romanian TV showed pictures of Ceausescu’s Presidential Palace in flames.

The television reported that Bucharest jails were opened by anti-Ceausescu supporters. Engineer Nicu Stefanescu, one of those released, said thousands of people had been arrested when the protests swirling through the country finally reached Bucharest Thursday night.

Even children were detained, he said, reporting that there were so many wounded in jail that blood was seen in the corridors.

The entire city of Timisoara, where the protests began on Dec. 15 and ignited the revolution, seemed to be surging through the streets in celebration. Crowds built bonfires fueled by portraits of Ceausescu that had been ripped down.

Residents said that between 2,000 and 4,500 people were killed by security forces during efforts in recent days to stop the protests in Timisoara.

“This is something we never expected to happen. The dictator is gone,” Ingeborg Kziraska, said in front of the local cathedral where she said more than 30 children were gunned down on Sunday.

Former Foreign Affairs Minister Corneliu Manescu, 73, went on Romanian TV earlier to announce formation of a provisional government until free elections are held, the East German news agency ADN said.

Manescu has for many months been under house arrest near Bucharest for criticizing Ceausescu, informed sources said.

Several senior military commanders appeared on television to announce Ceausescu’s ouster, indicating that the army had joined pro-democracy demonstrators.

While still in Ceausescu’s hands, Romanian radio reported early today that Defense Minister Vasile Milea had committed suicide, and blamed him for the national unrest.

An unidentified general denied on the radio after Ceausescu was ousted that Milea had taken his own life, but said that he indeed had died.

Ceausescu was the last hard-line Soviet alliance leader. With his family he strictly controlled the Spartan society he had built and refused to adopt reforms despite chronic shortages of food and energy that made life miserable for most Romanians.

He apparently felt so secure with the dominance of his cult of personality that he traveled to Iran earlier this week during the growing protests, and held a pro-government rally on Thursday that turned into a huge chorus of denunciations of his rule.