Rescue of 6 in Armenia May Be Hoax

MOSCOW —  With the nation still aglow over the news of six men being rescued after more than a month beneath the rubble of the Armenian earthquake, the Soviet press raised the possibility Friday that the rescue story is a hoax.

The bearded face of electrician Aikaz Akopyan had become a familiar sight on television after widespread publicity given to the account of his rescue from beneath the wreckage of a building in Leninakan.

Tass, the official Soviet news agency, had quoted Akopyan, now hospitalized in Yerevan, as saying he had been trapped in the building’s basement for 35 days, along with five neighbors, surviving on canned vegetables, pickles and a smoked ham.

Akopyan was said to have massaged another man’s broken arm with the healing power of a specialist in folk medicine. He reportedly sang songs to keep up his neighbors’ spirits.

Akopyan reportedly stuck to his story when he was interviewed again Friday. Doctors said that he was suffering from pneumonia and stress but appeared to be lucid.

But reporters for the government newspaper Izvestia said they now have deep suspicions about the story. They are not yet calling Akopyan a liar, but they have raised strong doubts about his story.

Tass said Friday, “Regrettably we are unable to confirm with full certainty the authenticity of the reports made by our Armenian colleagues about the ‘Leninakan miracle,’ nor can we categorically deny them.”

Izvestia said that Akopyan is indeed in a clinic in Yerevan--he was interviewed there for Thursday night’s national TV news program--but that efforts to trace the other five survivors have proved unavailing.

The newspaper said that officials in Leninakan can find no evidence of a rescue having taken place Wednesday, when Akopyan was said to have been pulled from the rubble of the nine-story building. Moreover, the woman who took Akopyan to the hospital in Yerevan has disappeared.

The deputy chief of the Yerevan hospital said he was “greatly surprised” at the woman’s failure to appear. She identified herself as Akopyan’s sister, and the hospital official said that relatives of other people injured in the earthquake had stayed by the side of their relatives for days.

The possibility of a hoax came to light when the Izvestia reporters happened, shortly after the rescue was announced, to be on the street in Leninakan where Akopyan said he lived.

Izvestia said no one in the neighborhood was aware that anyone had been pulled from the rubble.

“I refuse to believe that such an event could pass totally unnoticed by people who live in the area,” an official of the local rescue effort said.

According to the latest figures, nearly 25,000 people were killed in the Dec. 7 earthquake. Leninakan was one of the worst-hit towns. The search for survivors was called off two weeks ago.

A Health Ministry official told Izvestia that no trace could be found of the other five alleged survivors and that clinics in the area reported that they had no new patients on Wednesday.

Yuri Tunan, head of the Health and Social Security Department of the Armenian Council of Ministers, confirmed that he had alerted reporters to the rescue story after being told about it by bystanders in front of a clinic.

Tunan said that Akopyan, when asked why he did not know his rescuers, replied that they had blindfolded him, presumably to protect his eyes from sunlight after so many days in the dark.

Izvestia said that when its reporters visited Akopyan in the hospital he was being interviewed by a psychiatrist. The unidentified psychiatrist, while noting that Akopyan had tied his head in a sash to protect himself “against falling objects in his bed,” had recognized a Leninakan neighbor in the room and was believed to be sane.

“Frankly speaking, not all the doctors we talked to shared this professional opinion,” Izvestia said.

On television, Akopyan appeared to be dazed. He talked with apparent difficulty. When he was first asked what he remembered of the rescue, he replied, “I remember nothing.”

Izvestia noted that many earlier reports of unusual rescues have been disproved.

A Tass correspondent, Kirill Dibrova, wrote, “One wants to believe that this nearly incredible story will eventually turn out to be true.”