The World - News from March 16, 1988

A Soviet official said that gangs of youths committed “terrible crimes” on Armenians during last month’s ethnic unrest in the city of Sumgait in the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, according to a newspaper published March 12 in Azerbaijan but just now reaching Moscow. “Large-scale unrest took place in Sumgait, accompanied by pogroms (organized ethnic persecution), arson and other atrocities,” Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Katusev told the newspaper Bakinsky Rabochy. Soviet officials said 32 people died in the unrest, but other sources reported a much higher toll. It was the first time a Soviet official had used the word pogrom to describe the uprising.