Deputies dived for cover in the Armenian parliament as gunmen wearing trenchcoats drew Kalashnikovs and opened fire on government ministers, killing the Prime Minister, Mr Vazgen Sarksyan, and other senior officials. Mr Konstantin Petrosyan, a journalist covering an ordinary parliamentary session, later described the scene as it unfolded.
"The government was answering questions from deputies and Finance Minister Levon Barkhudaryan was at the microphone when suddenly four armed men stormed into the hall," he said.
"They opened fire around the hall, at the deputies . . . It all happened so fast. I was in complete shock.
"One of them announced, `We have come to avenge those who have drunk the blood of the nation'. "
He said the gunmen announced they were launching a coup and wanted television cameras to witness the event.
Grainy television footage shot during the attack showed the gunmen rushing the podium and firing into cabinet ministers seated in the front row.
Russia's Itar-Tass news agency said one of the gunmen ordered the parliament deputies to shut off their mobile phones.
Mr Petrosyan and other journalists who had been covering the parliament session were led out of the hall by one of the attackers, whom they recognised as a former journalist, Mr Nairi Umanyan, a former member of a nationalist political party. Truckloads of police arrived and sealed the building off. The Prime Minister, Mr Sarksyan, had forged a reputation as a strongman in this small trans-Caucasus ex-Soviet republic. His rise to power - he was a physical education teacher turned journalist - began in 1990 when he played a leading role during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan.
Beginning as chief of a rebel Armenian unit, he later took charge of the Armenian parliament's defence committee, and was given the task of co-ordinating the secessionist campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Mr Sarksyan was named defence minister in 1991 by then president Levon Ter-Petrossian after Armenia suffered a series of reverses in the enclave at the hands of Azeri forces, and managed to redress the situation.
After a brief period of political disgrace in 1992 when he was relegated to the governorship of a southern Armenian region bordering Azerbaijan, he was reinstated to a junior cabinet post in 1993, and re-appointed defence minister in 1995.
In the autumn of 1996, Mr Sarksyan, considered enigmatic and unpredictable, sent tanks against thousands of people protesting against alleged electoral fraud in polls that saw Mr Ter-Petrossian return to power.
But his public disavowal of Mr Ter-Petrossian in favour of the then prime minister, Mr Robert Kocharian, who favoured adopting a hard line in talks with Azeri authorities, contributed to the president's resignation in February 1998.
According to a report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe on the ensuing presidential elections, Mr Ter-Petrossian's resignation also followed a number of alleged assassination attempts on state officials.
Mr Sarksyan accused Mr Vano Siradeghian, the mayor of Yerevan and a close Ter-Petrossian associate, of orchestrating the attacks as a pretext to force the government's resignation, the OSCE said.
Undisputed as head of the army, Mr Sarksyan had established a network of former Nagorno-Karabakh fighters grouped around the Yerkrapah (defenders of the country) movement, whose political and economic might has grown over the past few years.
In May 1999, Mr Sarksyan and the former communist party leader, Mr Karen Dermerchian, formed the Unity coalition, winning parliamentary elections.
Mr Sarksyan reluctantly accepted the prime minister's post on June 11th, taking on an economy heavily dependent on international aid which forced him to tone down criticism of austerity measures required by Armenia's creditors.
He had repeatedly attacked the measures during the parliamentary campaign.
He maintained the close relations with Moscow he had established with the former Russian defence minister Mr Pavel Grachev.
But within Armenia, tension mounted with the clan of Karabakhtsis (Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh), which includes President Kocharian.
Over the past few weeks, he also issued repeated attacks against mafia elements and corruption that sapped the economy and government policy.
Azeri officials said yesterday they could not rule out the possibility that the attack on Armenia's parliament was linked to talks to resolve the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
"I can't exclude that this was initiated by outside forces that want to destabilise the country during the Nagorno-Karabakh talks," the First Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Khalaf Khalafov, said in the Azeri capital, Baku.
The Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan are believed to be close to an agreement on the disputed region, where war broke out in 1988 over attempts by the area's ethnic Armenian majority to shake off Azeri rule.
Some 35,000 people died in fighting that continued until a 1994 ceasefire.