More Deaths in Nagorno-Karabakh : Ethnic conflict: Seven victims are reported as a bloody weekend ends. Violence also flares in Georgia.

New armed clashes between militiamen of two former Soviet republics reportedly killed seven people Sunday in Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, ending one of the bloodiest weekends yet in the region where more than 1,000 people have died in nearly four years of warfare.

Four Armenians were killed in attacks on two Armenian villages in the snowy mountainous region south of Russia, according to Mikit Kazaryan, charge d’affaires of the Armenian mission in Moscow. Other villages were also stormed, but there were no casualty reports yet.

An Azerbaijani news service, Assa-Irada, reported that Armenian militants had penetrated the Azerbaijani border from Armenia and attacked several Azerbaijani villages, killing three people in the Ter-Ter area.

The village of Shusha, an Azerbaijani stronghold and the focal point of the latest and most heated round of fighting in the intractable conflict between the neighboring republics, was heavily shelled Sunday, and 10 houses were destroyed, Assa-Irada said.

In Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the republic’s national security council demanded Sunday that President Ayaz Mutalibov either take decisive action or resign.

Assa-Irada also claimed that 200 “hired assassins” of Armenian nationality had been sent from around the world to Stepanakert, the capital of the disputed region.

“The militants have been well trained to carry out subversive acts and combat in complicated conditions by special corps instruction in Europe,” Assa-Irada said.

Dozens of people have died in the recent flare-up of the conflict, which was sparked last week when a helicopter was shot down near Shusha, killing 38 Azerbaijanis.

Nagorno-Karabakh is the center of the bloodiest and longest-running ethnic conflict in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Both sides claim rights to the region, which is officially part of Azerbaijan but is populated mostly by Armenians.

Reports on the death toll for the weekend and the last month vary. Assa-Irada reported that more than 100 people died in fighting Friday and Saturday alone, and that 60 more were killed in similar fighting last week.

Kazaryan said that about 30 Armenians died in clashes this weekend. In other fighting last month, 65 Armenians were killed, he added.

Recent battles have been more intense--with heavier artillery fire and more troops--than previous fighting because former Soviet soldiers, who suppressed the escalation of the violence, were withdrawn in December by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

While in the United States for summit talks, Yeltsin--fearing a full-fledged war near Russia’s border--called for international troops to intervene to try to bring peace to the region.

The fighting has escalated so much that in just the last month, Azerbaijanis launched 1,200 missiles at Stepanakert alone, Kazaryan said.

In other violence in the territory of the former Soviet Union, a rally in Tbilisi attended by 5,000 supporters of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the ousted leader of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, turned violent and one man was killed, according to the Itar-Tass and Interfax news services.

Itar-Tass reported that the violence was provoked by Gamsakhurdia supporters when they tried to break through a cordon of national guardsmen. However, Interfax reported that police and national guardsmen shot into the air to disperse the crowd, and the republic’s Health Ministry reported that one person died and several were injured.

Supporters of Gamsakhurdia, who was ousted early last month, have been rallying in increasing numbers over the last few days in protest against the new regime, which took power claiming that Gamsakhurdia was a dictator.

Moscow bureau research assistant Andrei Ostroukh contributed to this story.