Army Fires on Crowd in Azerbaijan : Soviet Union: Many are reported killed and wounded as troops break through human blockades. About 25,000 to 30,000 people were on the streets at the time.

Soviet army troops opened fire on Azerbaijani militants on the streets of the republic’s capital of Baku early Saturday, using tanks to break through human blockades and killing and wounding many, Azerbaijani activists said.

“They simply opened fire at will, with no warning shots,” Leila Unsova, a spokeswoman for the Azerbaijani Popular Front, said in a telephone interview from Baku. “At least 13 are dead so far, but we expect more. Our doctors have been told not to go home.”

Initial reports of casualties were extremely sketchy, with figures ranging from two deaths to 500. But the shooting seemed certain to further inflame passions resulting from the current ethnic conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which began last weekend. It marked the Kremlin’s first use of deadly force against the Soviet people since army troops killed 20 pro-independence demonstrators during a protest last April 9 in Tbilisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia.

Unsova said the shooting started shortly after midnight at the blockades at the northern edge of Baku and then moved into the city center. About 25,000 to 30,000 people were still on the streets when the firing began, she said.

“The people are very angry. This will not end things. There simply will be more bloodshed,” Unsova declared.

Another Popular Front spokesman, Mahmoud Kesamanly, said the Soviet troops “pushed right through the blockades with tanks. But people started resisting right away. There are many dead and injured.”

Sporadic and sometimes heavy gunfire continued at least until dawn Saturday, witnesses in Baku reported.

Both U.S. and Soviet sources have cited the strong negative reaction to last year’s killings in Tbilisi as a key factor in Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s restraint until Saturday in Azerbaijan.

The Georgian incident has posed significant political problems for Gorbachev ever since. As recently as last month in the Congress of People’s Deputies, representatives from Tbilisi, still angry at Gorbachev over the deaths, walked out. The president personally ran out into the hall and appealed to them not to leave.

The confrontation early Saturday came after a day in which Azerbaijani militants ruled the streets of Baku, trapping some Red Army troops in their barracks, blocking others from patrolling the city and vowing to set up an Islamic republic, according to reports from the area.

The city of 1.8 million was in a state of virtual anarchy during the day Friday, with most factories closed and thousands of people milling around outdoor bonfires, according to official media and a spokesman at the Azerbaijani republic mission in Moscow.

For several hours, the Baku activists had appeared poised for a confrontation with Soviet troops, who were waiting for an order to disperse the crowd. The Azerbaijanis had vowed that they would not abandon their blockades, creating a powder-keg situation.

In Moscow, the Kremlin announced that it was sending in more soldiers, but gave no figures. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged that after a week of fighting and despite the deployment of about 24,000 troops in the region, the situation had not improved and had worsened in some places.

“We must take tough measures,” Gen. Alexei Lizichev, chief of the army’s political section, declared on the evening news program Vremya.

In a nationally broadcast statement, the Soviet government had appeared to hint that the army was preparing to strike. It warned that the violence would be stopped “at all costs,” for “today’s tragedy may turn into tomorrow’s national catastrophe.”

The news agency Tass said Azerbaijani nationalists attacked the Armenian border village of Yeraskh, killing three Armenians and wounding four others.

Armenians struck back at the Azerbaijani village of Tadan, according to press reports, swooping in aboard stolen helicopters and in an armored personnel carrier. They reportedly drove many Azerbaijanis from the village.

In a report from Tadan, the daily Sovietskaya Rossiya quoted villages as saying they had lost faith in Moscow to end the fighting.

“Will the Soviet power ever be able to protect us again?” one villager was quoted as saying.

Popular frustration is mounting over what is perceived as Moscow’s slowness in dealing with the crisis. Demands were made for the Kremlin to act quickly and toughly to impose law and order in the area, where about 200 people have been killed in clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis over the last two years.

The Interior Ministry reported 72 fatalities in the last week, together with 220 wounded. These figures are believed to cover casualties in Baku for the most part. Once the dead are tallied in other areas, the toll is expected to be much higher.

More than 13,000 Armenians have been evacuated from Baku in the last week. A group of 240 Armenians on a plane that arrived Friday night from Baku refused to disembark until the Kremlin promised to ensure their safety and provide food and housing.

The outbreak of violence was sparked by a recent incident in Baku, but the underlying cause is festering tension over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave of largely Christian Armenians in the mostly Muslim republic of Azerbaijan. Armenians and Azerbaijanis alike claim the region on historical grounds.

In recent days the most serious fighting has taken place in cities and towns in Azerbaijan, according to reports from the area. But the official news agency Tass reported Friday that “militants are being massed around Nagorno-Karabakh,” where because of sabotage a third of the people in the region’s capital were without water and several blocks were without heat.

Foreign journalists have been admitted to Armenia, but they are not allowed to enter Azerbaijan.

In Baku, about 10,000 Azerbaijanis paraded through the streets Thursday chanting, “ Azadlyg ,” or freedom, according to a report in the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda. The marchers trapped Soviet troops in their barracks, the newspaper said, and “blocked all approaches leading to Baku with people, buses and trucks.”

It said: “The situation in the city heats up literally by the hour. If the masses do not calm down, it could soon lead to unpredictable events.”

The daily Izvestia reported that troops at the edge of the city fired warning shots early Friday to extricate themselves from an angry crowd. There were no casualties then, it said.

According to reports from nationalists in Armenia, supported by news reports on television, Soviet soldiers at the port in Baku were continuing to help with the evacuation of Armenians. At the same time, tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis reportedly rallied in front of the republic’s Communist Party headquarters and demanded that the Soviet troops be withdrawn.

The crowds in Baku also reportedly called for the republic’s government to resign and for Soviet authority to be overthrown.

Much of Baku was said to be paralyzed by protest strikes, with motor traffic halted and no newspapers being published. According to a television news report, the crowds blocking the streets to prevent Soviet army patrols vowed earlier Friday to continue the action through the night. It said civilian vigilante patrols were performing neighborhood police duties.

“We believe that if Azerbaijan is under a state of emergency, Armenia should be too,” a spokesman at the Armenian mission in Moscow told a reporter. “That is why our people are expressing so much discontent.”

Gorbachev, addressing a conference at the Kremlin, said the fighting served the interests of “extremists, irresponsible adventurists and representatives of the shadow economy,” or black market.

“ Perestroika is a bone in their throat,” he said, referring to his program of social and economic reform. “But they can’t oppose it directly, so they clutch at tension on an ethnic basis. In Azerbaijan, forces have already appeared that are pressing for the republic’s secession from the Soviet Union, for an Islamic Azerbaijan. But this finds no support among the people.”