away from the Armenian district and toward the sea, but many Armenians saw this act as implicating him as a leader of the riot. The crowd, in any case, dispersed and several groups made for the Armenian district. Radio broadcast Another factor that may have ignited the violence was an announcement of the murder of two Azerbaijanis. On February 27, Soviet Deputy Federal Procurator, Aleksandr Katusev, announced on Baku Radio and Central Television, that two Azerbaijani youths, Bakhtiyar Guliyev and Ali Hajiyev, were killed in a clash between Armenians and Azerbaijanis near Aghdam several days earlier One of the youths was killed by an Azerbaijani police officer, but Katusev neglected to mention that and would later receive a stinging rebuke for revealing the nationalities of the young men. The secretive nature the Soviet Union was still attempting to shake off led many Azerbaijanis to believe that there was something more nefarious to Katusev's report than he let on. Pogrom and atrocities The pogrom of the Armenian population of Sumgait started on the evening of February 27, one week after the appeal of the Council of People's Deputies to unify Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia and according to many sources was a direct response to the council's decision. The perpetrators targeted the victims based solely on ethnicity — being Armenian was the only criterion. Some sources speak of premeditation ahead of the break-out of violence. Cobbles were brought into the city to block and limit access and exit from the town; the perpetrators had previously obtained the list of addresses of the Armenian residents of the city. Warnings by Azerbaijanis sympathetic to their Armenian neighbors instructed them to leave their lights on the night of the 27th; those who shut them off would be assumed to be Armenian. According to several Armenian witnesses and Soviet military personnel, alcohol and anasha, a term referring to narcotics, were brought in trucks and distributed to the crowds, although such accounts were not reported in the media. According to de Waal, the fact that the attackers were armed with homemade weapons that would have taken some time and effort to manufacture suggests a certain level of planning. Violence broke on the evening of February 27. The attacking groups were of varying age groups. While the main participants were adult males and some women, there were also young students who took part in vandalizing and looting appliances, shoes,