Armenians Strike at Base of Commonwealth Forces

Armed Armenians attacked an antiaircraft base of the former Soviet army, killed two soldiers and took senior officers hostage but failed in their attempt at seizing arms for their warfare with Azerbaijan in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, a spokesman for the joint armed forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States said Monday.

There were continued reports of bombing and shelling of Armenian and Azerbaijani settlements and of new casualties in the four-year conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region of Azerbaijan with primarily Armenian residents.

Fighting in the region, the most explosive of the many ethnic trouble spots in the former Soviet Union, has intensified in recent months. Both sides have tried to use the withdrawal of Commonwealth troops from the region, which was completed last week, to expand their arsenals.

The Commonwealth’s armed forces and the Armenian government had sharply differing versions of the attack on the antiaircraft base outside Artik, in western Armenia near the Turkish border. The attack occurred Sunday but was only reported Monday.

Vladimir S. Nikanorov, a Commonwealth armed forces spokesman, said Monday that 60 or so Armenian gunmen fired at the military base from roofs of nearby houses and ordered the soldiers to surrender, open the arms depots and abandon the base.

But the Armenian government said the attackers were not armed bandits or militia but refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh who decided to try to seize arms at the base after they learned that Azerbaijani forces had taken large amounts of arms and ammunition from another base in Agdam, Azerbaijan.

Fighting continued in and around Nagorno-Karabakh on Monday. And for the fourth day, Azerbaijani fighters shelled Askeran, a largely Armenian town.

No new casualty count was available. Armenian reports said 46 people died in the shelling over the weekend. Armenians, meanwhile, fired on Agdam, and several people were reported killed.

Sergei Loiko, a researcher in The Times’ Moscow bureau, contributed to this report.