Romanians Oust Ceausescu, Last Dictator of the Soviet Bloc : East Bloc: Outraged citizens and rebel soldiers battle with troops loyal to former leader. Hundreds reported killed in latest fighting.

Outraged Romanians and rebel soldiers toppled President Nicolae Ceausescu on Friday in fierce, daylong battles with troops loyal to the Soviet Bloc’s last dictator. Hundreds were reported killed in the fighting, which continued early Saturday.

About 2:30 a.m. (7:30 p.m. EST Friday), heavy gunfire broke out around Romania’s main television station, where dissidents and those trying to form a new leadership had been broadcasting to the Romanian people on Friday. Occupants of the building ducked out of the windows as shots were fired toward the building and the lights went out.

Minutes before the shooting started in the tense capital, crowds were still outside the TV building chanting slogans in support of the popular revolt.

On Friday morning, Ceausescu fled his presidential palace as hundreds of thousands of Romanians called for his death in retaliation for the massacre of their countrymen in a military crackdown unleashed a week ago.

The Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug reported that Ceausescu was hunted down and captured, although it gave no details in its report from Bucharest. There was no confirmation of his capture from Romanian radio, and his whereabouts were unknown.

The head of the Romanian armed security forces, the Securitate, which is loyal to Ceausescu, reportedly swapped sides and ordered his forces to align themselves with the army and the Romanian people, Bucharest radio reported Saturday.

The radio, monitored in Vienna, also said the interior minister and a deputy prime minister had been arrested by the army-backed movement which ousted Ceausescu.

The radio said Interior Minister General Tudor Postelnicu was being interrogated at the Communist Party Central Committee headquarters, where he had been arrested, about any secret plans for the security troops.

Army units joining with protesters had been winning control of Bucharest from loyalist security forces in battles that continued into the night. Fighting also was reported late Friday night in the western city of Timisoara, where the revolt began on Dec. 15.

A source in Timisoara said pro-Ceausescu commandos dropped by parachute had descended on the town and opened fire on people in the center.

“I can hear shots,” the source said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press office in Belgrade. “Tanks are now rolling in and the people are applauding, but it is not known exactly who is in the tanks.”

The death toll from Friday’s uprising was believed to be in the hundreds, in addition to the thousands of civilians reported killed since the start of the unrest.

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

Provisional leader Ion Iliescu appeared on Romanian television along with other members of a National Salvation Committee that the media said was formed to run the country temporarily. He, along with former Foreign Minister Corneliu Manescu, said free elections would be sought by April.

“Over 20 years of dictatorship and oppression, we have lost the habit of using freedom,” the Soviet news agency Tass quoted Romanian poet Mirca Dinescu as saying. “What takes place now is madness. In a few days we shall calm down, bury our dead and will be consciously building new, free and democratic life.”

State-run Romanian media, now in the hands of dissidents who pledged honest reporting, said Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, fled the palace by helicopter early Friday but later were caught and put in detention.

It also was reported they had fled the country. But Yugoslavia’s Tanjug news agency said late Friday night that they had been captured, along with other ranking members of the old guard. It was not known where they were.

The presidential palace later was set ablaze.

Ceausescu’s son, Nicu, also was reported in custody and was shown on TV with a bloody face, his arms held by a civilian and a man in a uniform. He was then taken away by his captors.

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 Timisoara and led to Friday’s nationwide uprising by millions.

Only last month, Ceausescu was overwhelmingly reaffirmed as supreme leader by a fiercely obedient Communist Party conference that paid homage to his personality cult. On Thursday, during a speech in central Bucharest, he was shouted down by jeering demonstrators.

After Ceausescu fled Bucharest on Friday morning, hundreds of thousands of jubilant Romanians rallied in the capital for hours, even as there were reports of fighting between rebel troops and pro-Ceausescu forces.

About 2,000 pro-Ceausescu forces then attacked the city later Friday, Romanian TV reported.

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

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

The Communist Party Central Committee building was partially blown up, the reports said.

Tass, quoting a spokesman for anti-Ceausescu army commanders, said “it is only separate groups of special anti-terrorist forces which earlier had been guarding Nicolae Ceausescu that give resistance to the forces.”

“These small but vicious groups now operate in separate pockets in the capital, and the armed forces are mopping them up,” Tass said.

The Polish news agency PAP said 70 well-armed security officers barricaded themselves in the Central Committee building. It said Ceausescu supporters who defended themselves in the palace surrendered Friday night, and order was restored at the city’s central square.

“Explosions can still be heard in Bucharest every now and then and red light rockets seen over the city,” PAP said. “An appeal was repeatedly issued to Bucharest residents to barricade the access to the city from the airport.”

The report said it appeared that several hundred people may have been killed on the city’s Revolution Boulevard.

Romanian TV showed demonstrators in the square waving the flag--its socialist emblem cut from the middle--in front of the palace as fire raged overhead. On a live radio broadcast from the square, an army commander was heard ordering demonstrators to disperse so the army could finish its operations.

Other TV footage showed demonstrators hurling books written by Ceausescu from the palace.