Revolutionary leaders announced they had captured deposed President Nicolae Ceausescu on Saturday and would put the Soviet bloc's last Stalinist dictator on trial. Heavy fighting broke out in the capital.
The insurgents claimed control of the country after a night of ferocious battles between army units siding with pro-reform protesters and security forces loyal to Ceausescu, who fled his palace Friday.But loyalist guards continued to battle army units in Bucharest Saturday. Bursts of gunfire echoed among the grandiose canyons of buildings and monuments the Communist leader built to himself during 24 years of rule.
Rocket-propelled grenades slammed into the 13-story television building in an attempt to silence the opposition's broadcasts.
At about 1 a.m. Sunday local time (5 p.m. Saturday MST), most of the shooting in Bucharest had stopped and the city was virtually silent, Hungarian Defense Ministry spokesman Gyoergy Keleti said on Hungarian television.
Fighting raged Saturday at Bucharest's international airport Otopeni, with pro-Ceausescu forces in helicopter gunships strafing army units, the state news agency Agerpres said.
The pilot of an Austrian plane that brought aid into Bucharest Friday evening said when he returned to Vienna late Saturday that he had seen at least 30 bodies of dead attackers at the airport.
Fighting also was reported in outlying cities, including Timisoara, where the revolution broke out on Dec. 15. However, an Associated Press reporter in the city said revolutionary soldiers were in control.
An Austrian television reporter said there was an "unbelievable attack" Saturday afternoon by pro-Ceausescu forces who had parachuted into Timisoara the day before. He quoted eyewitnesses as seeing bodies on the street.
Hundreds of people have been killed in two days of street fighting and thousands more were reported killed in a week of crackdowns on the burgeoning protest movement.
Revolutionaries took swift revenge against pro-Ceausescu fighters captured near the downtown post office, killing them on the spot.
Romanian television gave a jubilant boost to the revolt, announcing that the army had captured Ceausescu one day after he was ousted by a week-old popular revolt.
Ceausescu did not appear on television, however, and a Romanian television report Friday of his capture was later withdrawn. The television said Saturday he would not be shown to prevent rescue attempts by loyalists.
Ion Iliescu, a member of the provisional revolutionary governing coalition that has announced a program of democratic reform, called Ceausescu a "poison hyena" and said the new government would prosecute the former president and his wife, Elena, who had been the second-most powerful person in the country.
Emil Bobu, who in the past was put in control of the country when the Ceausescus were traveling abroad, also was captured with the Ceausescus, Iliescu said.
In Bucharest, fighting continued around the television and radio stations and the partly damaged Communist Party headquarters, where security forces barricaded themselves late Friday. Revolutionary forces appealed to residents nearby to evacuate.
Gorbachev asked other Warsaw Pact nations to cooperate in devising "coordinated efforts in providing support to the people of Romania," the Tass news agency reported.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn said a Warsaw Pact meeting planned Sunday was scrapped because "the situation shows signs of stabilization."
Soviet officials all but ruled out direct unilateral Soviet military help, but Gorbachev said medical aid was being extended.
Doctors at Bucharest Emergency Hospital said they had treated hundreds of wounded at that hospital, one of 14 in the city.
Dr. Marian Palaschivescu, haggard in a filthy blue terry cloth hospital jacket, told reporters 51 bodies had arrived by early afternoon at Bucharest Emergency Hospital. He then glanced at three sets of legs protruding from the trunk of a car that screeched to a stop. "No, 54," he said.
The army, which rose against Ceausescu on Friday, was joined by amateur revolutionaries suddenly at war after decades of repression. Their ragtag forces were nervous and often trigger-happy in the face of desperate professionals fighting for their lives against inevitable criminal prosecution under a reformist government.
The National Salvation Committee, the name of the coalition provisional government, announced that Gen. Nicolae Militaru, an army officer demoted under Ceausescu, had been appointed defense minister.
Maj. Gen. Stefan Gusa, former first deputy defense minister and Gen. Victor Stanculescu were appointed his deputies, Romanian television said.
Despite the tension, many Romanians were clearly enjoying their sudden freedom. People took wild rides around town waving huge red, gold and blue flags from which they had ripped the center symbol of Ceausescu's brand of communism.
In Timisoara, the birthplace of the revolt that swept Ceausescu from power, two people were reported killed and six wounded in fighting Saturday.
Fierce fighting also was reported at various times from the cities of Brasov, Arad and Sibiu.
Relatives continued a grisly search in forests outside Timisoara through mass graves of corpses, most naked and many mutilated, of victims of a massacre by security forces last weekend.
Romanian television said the death toll approached 12,000, but there was no confirmation. The revolt reached Bucharest on Thursday. Ceausescu and his wife fled the city in a helicopter Friday.