Azerbaijani Stronghold in Karabakh Falls : Caucasus: Armenian forces take advantage of political turmoil to capture last bastion. Defenders and 20,000 residents flee.

Taking advantage of a military revolt that drove Azerbaijan’s elected leader to seek distant refuge, Armenian forces Sunday captured this last Azerbaijani stronghold in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Kurban Kurbanov, an Azerbaijani army colonel, said 36 hours of heavy artillery fire sent the last of Mardakert’s defenders and 20,000 inhabitants fleeing with their possessions.

Journalists approaching the town later found it surrounded by Armenian soldiers and saw spirals of smoke from the two-day battle.

Kurbanov, who runs the hospital in Tartar about 10 miles to the north, said at least eight people were killed and 60 others wounded Saturday when the Armenian offensive began. No casualty figures were available Sunday, but officials in Armenia said losses were heavy on both sides.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous Armenian-populated enclave inside Muslim-ruled Azerbaijan and the object of some of the bloodiest fighting in the former Soviet Union. Sunday’s takeover gave local Christian Armenian forces, who are aided by the Armenian government, control of all but a few small villages in the enclave--their best position in the five-year conflict.

In April, the Armenians also seized a chunk of Azerbaijani territory between the enclave and Armenia proper. That victory led to negotiations that brought all sides--Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Karabakh Self-Defense Forces--close to a cease-fire agreement early this month.

But then Surat Guseinov, a popular Azerbaijani battlefield commander, began marching on Baku, the capital, to overthrow President Abulfez Elchibey. Azerbaijan’s first elected post-Communist leader, whose position had been weakened by months of military defeats, fled June 18. On Thursday the Parliament gave his powers to its newly elected chairman, former Soviet-era strongman Geidar Aliyev.

Apparently seeking control over the new regime, Guseinov arrived in Baku on Sunday for talks with Aliyev. The two men later announced that Guseinov’s forces, numbering several thousand men, were returning west to Nagorno-Karabakh and to the besieged town of Agdam just outside the enclave.

“The Armenians have started their barbarian attacks on us again in the last two days,” Aliyev said. “We called our boys back this morning to move to the front.”

They were too late to save Mardakert, a town in northern Nagorno-Karabakh that Elchibey had defended at high cost to avoid the shame of a complete Armenian takeover.

Soldiers retreating from Mardakert said they were demoralized by the political infighting and the war itself, which has claimed more than 8,000 lives. Some walked alone or in small groups. Others lay on their backs by the side of the road, exhausted.

One tank commander, a Soviet army veteran, had tears in his eyes. “I don’t care who our president is,” he said bitterly. “I just want someone to stop this senseless war.”