Shells Kill 20 Civilians, Azerbaijan Says

Armenian troops fired rockets and artillery at the key town of Fizuli south of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave Monday, killing at least 20 civilians, Azerbaijan claimed.

Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian area inside Azerbaijan, denied making any such attack.

The reported attack followed the Armenian capture over the weekend of a strip of western Azerbaijan lying between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The Red Cross said it was rushing aid to thousands of refugees.

In Geneva, where peace talks sponsored by the United States, Russia and Turkey continued, Azerbaijan’s foreign minister demanded that Armenia withdraw from the newly captured territory as a precondition for further talks.

Turkish President Turgut Ozal said his country should “bare its teeth” at neighboring Armenia. Ozal, however, stopped short of calling for Turkish military intervention.

Later Monday, Turkey closed its airspace to all scheduled, charter and relief flights to Armenia. The Foreign Ministry said four or five flights weekly would be affected.

Turkey also summoned the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China--to request a council meeting on ways to safeguard Azerbaijani territory.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, the ambassadors of Azerbaijan and Armenia each circulated letters blaming the other’s republic for military offensives.

Nagorno-Karabakh seeks independence from Azerbaijan.