On 20 February 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh Supreme Council (the regional legislature) issued a request to transfer the region from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. The Moscow government declined the claims, while hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Yerevan in support of the idea. Few days later, on 26 February, an anti-Armenian "pogrom" broke out in the Azerbaijani seaside industrial city Sumgait, forcing thousands of Armenians to leave Azerbaijan "en masse".