Unrest in Baltics Grows as Troops Move Into Latvia

Soviet military raids in the Baltic republics spread to Latvia today with troops storming a Latvian militia school in Riga to disarm the cadets, the republic’s government said.

In the neighboring republic of Lithuania, soldiers patrolled the streets of the capital, Vilnius, and manned checkpoints on roads into the city. No new violence was reported.

But in Latvia, government spokesman Janis Lousis said the raids spread to Riga when Soviet special troops wearing black berets fired into windows and stormed Latvia’s higher militia school at 2 a.m.

The Soviet soldiers beat cadets and confiscated weapons from the school but then left the building, Lousis said, adding that two cadets were hospitalized with minor bullet wounds and several others were beaten badly enough to require hospitalization.

Lousis said several dozen Latvian militiamen with submachine guns were posted at the republic’s television center to guard against a takeover by Soviet troops, similar to the assault in Lithuania in which 14 people were killed.

Thousands of unarmed Latvian civilians continued to surround the Parliament building, radio facility and other buildings in Riga to prevent Soviet troops from taking them over, and trucks filled with sand blocked major streets into central Riga in an attempt to stop Soviet tanks, Lousis said.

There were no unusual troop movements reported in the Riga area, but Lousis said the Latvian government feared the military would try to take over buildings on the pretext of protecting minority Russians and the Communist Party, as it did in Lithuania.

“We have information that the scene in Latvia will be the same as in Lithuania,” he said. “We are doing our best to try to prevent it.”

In Vilnius, a Lithuanian government spokesman said the republic was bracing for even more actions by Soviet troops because the world’s attention is focused on the Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait.