The New York Times
KURDS MASSACRE MORE ARMENIANS
APRIL 26, 1915
TIFLIS, Transcaucasia, April 24 (via Petrograd and London, April 23.)-- Refugees who have reached the Russian line report that massacre of Armenians by Mohammedans are being continued on even a greater scale. They say that all the inhabitants of ten villages near Van, in Armenia, Asiatic Turkey, have been put to death.
On being advised of massacres at Erzrum, Berjan and Zeitun, and of the conditions at Van, the Katolicos, head of Armenian church at Etchmiadzin near Erivan, cabled to President Wilson an appeal to the people of United States on behalf of the Armenians.
Robert M. Labaree, an American missionary of Urumiah, Persia, who visited the Serbian villages and with whom the refugees were quartered, says he found the humanity of the people as broad as their means were limited. The village Governments or Relief Committees had issued eight pounds of flour to each refugee in six weeks.
The Associated Press received reports of the massacre of 800 of the villagers in Urza and of 720 in Salmas. The painful uncertainty concerning the 15,000 survivors of Urza was confirmed by a journey through Salmas. Three weeks had failed to obliterate the signs of the slaughter. Pools of blood still marked the execution places in Haftevan. The caps of thirty-six victims lay where a mud wall had been topped over on them. A young man named Hackatur related the story of his escape from a well in which the bodies of the dead had been crammed. He fell with others and was tossed into the well, but he managed to wriggle through the bodies lying on top of him and escaped at nightfall.
Not all the Christians lacked the courage or means for self-defense. At the desolated Catholic mission at Hosrova, where forty-eight victims of the massacre were buried, Elizabeth Marcara, an Armenian girl, told how she and young David Ishmu battled with the Kurds. Her story later was amply confirmed.
"When the Kurds burst the village gates," said Miss Marcara, "we took rifles and mounted to the roof. I fired eighty shots. The Kurds were forced to withdraw outside the village wall. There I killed two and David two. Later we killed four more, one of whom was the Chief. The Kurds abandoned their plunder, and carried off their dead.
"The battle lasted three hours. The death of their Chief caused the Kurds to flee. We came from the roof and recovered the things the Kurds had left behind them. Reinforced, I fled with my relatives, We saw the Kurds engaged in the pillage of Hafgvan and fired on them, but they escaped with their valuables.
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Originally Posted by Mingle
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