Heavy Losses Spur Azerbaijan to Call for 3 Days of Mourning

The government of Azerbaijan declared three days of mourning Saturday after the republic suffered heavy losses in an upsurge of fighting with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Baku government said many people had died in the battle for the strategic town of Khojaly, captured by Armenian fighters Wednesday. Correspondents in the area said large numbers of bodies were being brought down the hillsides by refugees.

Neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia reported any new fighting Saturday, a day after two Azerbaijani villages in and near Nagorno-Karabakh came under heavy attack.

Both countries are former Soviet republics and members of the new Commonwealth of Independent States that replaced the Soviet Union last December.

Nationalists accusing Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutalibov of failing to back their combatants called off a mass rally, saying they feared an attack from former Soviet troops still deployed around the city.

Most Baku streets were deserted, with Azerbaijani flags, fringed with black, fluttering from buildings. But small groups gathered to commemorate the dead in last week’s clashes.

Forty-seven fresh graves of victims had been dug and more were being prepared.

The centuries-old dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, muted during seven decades of Soviet rule in Armenia and Azerbaijan, exploded in 1988 and more than 1,000 people have since died.