Shooting Erupts at Albania Military Academy; 4 Die : Protests: Cadets reportedly were guarding the bust of late dictator Hoxha. Opposition party says extremists are moving to topple the government.

Shooting erupted Friday at a military academy in the Albanian capital where cadets reportedly were guarding a bust of the late dictator Enver Hoxha, and state television reported that at least four people were killed.

Albania’s Communist president, seeking to stave off more unrest amid a quickening pace of events in the Balkan nation, named a new government Friday headed by a Marxist economist. Protests by vying political groups continued around the country.

A television report said one of the four people killed at the academy in Tirana was a police officer. The three others were not identified, but they apparently died in a clash between anti-Communist demonstrators and supporters of Hoxha, the founder of Albania’s Stalinist government.

Fifty people were arrested, the report said. An official journalist speaking by telephone from Tirana said cadets at the academy had been threatening to shoot anyone who tried to take down the bust of Hoxha.

Albanian television showed footage of thousands of pro-Hoxha demonstrators in other Albanian towns, a reaction to the anti-Hoxha crowds that earlier in the week tore down statues of the late dictator and burned his portraits and books.

The opposition Democratic Party said extremists were trying to organize a march on Tirana to topple the government, according to an Albanian radio broadcast Friday.

The statement was quoted as saying: “According to information we have from branches of the Democratic Party in the districts of Permet, Skrapar, Gjirokaster, Fier and Kucove, workers of the executive committees and the Albanian Workers (Communist) Party committees in the districts have called on the people to register as volunteers and to march toward Tirana.”

Anti-government protests in Tirana reached a peak Wednesday, when an angry crowd destroyed a giant bronze statue of Hoxha. A museum of Hoxha memorabilia was closed Friday.

The same night the statue was destroyed, President Ramiz Alia announced that he was taking power directly, and that he would form a new government and presidential council.

Members of the new government were announced on television Friday night.

A journalist for the state media, who spoke from Tirana on condition of anonymity, said Alia named Fatos Nano, an economist from the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies, to be the new premier.

“He has been moving very fast in recent months up to the top,” the journalist said.

Alia will remain as head of state, while Nano will be head of the new government that answers to the president.

The journalist said Nano, most recently in charge of foreign trade, was thought to be more reform-minded than the man he is replacing, Adil Carcani. A new vice premier and ministers of foreign affairs and interior also were appointed. The interior minister controls the police force.

The television news also announced the appointment of a nine-member presidential council that included Alia, Nano, writer Kici Blushi and retired parliamentary leader Haxhi Lleshi.

The role of the presidential council was not clear. The journalist said the new government included no members of the opposition parties permitted by the Communists since December.

The new government is to serve until at least March 31, when Albania is scheduled to have its first free elections since Communist rule began in 1946.

The state television showed demonstrations in support of Hoxha in the southern towns of Skrapar and Permet, the journalist said. He quoted the television as saying more than 700 students declared that they would go on a hunger strike if Hoxha’s statue in Tirana is not put back by Monday.

“People who loved this leader will not agree with what the rest have done,” he said.

An explosion of anger against the dictator who repressed his country for 41 years has seen crowds tear down Hoxha statues in three cities and burn his works and portraits in the streets of Tirana.

Until this week, Alia had refused to overturn the cult surrounding Hoxha, his predecessor and sometime mentor. The cult kept Albania isolated and impoverished for decades and bolstered a Communist grip on power that is beginning to unravel.

“If the party had put the question of veneration of Hoxha in time, it would without doubt have gained in credit and prestige,” said Arben Puto, a historian and member of the non-party Forum for the Defense of Human Rights.

“But the party is very much late with this, and is now always lagging behind (events), and, of course, it loses much ground,” Puto said by telephone from Tirana.

Tens of thousands of Tirana residents who went on strike and joined students fasting in protests Wednesday were back at work Friday.

Independent trade unions published an appeal for calm in Friday newspapers, saying, “Today, work should be the cult to which we bow,” according to the state news agency ATA.

Albanian television and newspapers have given dramatic accounts of this week’s events, which Puto said will go down as “one of the most significant dates in the history of the country.”

Agron Fico, a senior museum official reached by telephone from Vienna, said a sign saying “closed for reconstruction” was hung Friday on the pyramid-shaped, marble-and-steel structure built to honor Hoxha and his version of Albania’s history.

Officials were sorting through some 700 pieces of memorabilia chronicling Hoxha’s rise from Communist partisan fighting fascism in World War II to unchallenged dictator.