The World - News from Dec. 23, 1988

Soviet authorities have evacuated 92,000 people from northern Armenia in the wake of the Dec. 7 earthquake, the Soviet news agency Tass reported. Tass also increased the official count of ruined villages in the area to 300 and said 58 of them were obliterated. It also said that about 10% of the livestock in rural areas died. Meanwhile, a commission of the ruling Politburo also found that rail services are “a bottleneck” slowing the delivery of aid to the disaster area. The commission ordered all possible transport mobilized to carry a shipment of trailers to the disaster area for use as medical stations.