June 23, 2005
In the intercommunal unrest that characterised the last years of the Ottoman empire, Armenians again found themselves under attack
HARROWING details have been received of massacres in Transcaucasia. Indiscriminate slaughter is proceeding in which Armenians, Tartars, Persians and Kurds are all engaged.
There are said to be 30,000 combatants. There appears to be no means of unravelling the butchery except that it is the result of the long period of misrule. It was this which led to the sanguinary outbreak at Stavropol between members of the Orthodox and the Old Faith.
Thirty-seven thousand insurgents in the district of Sharukhan, in the province of Erivan, sacked and burned four Armenian villages and surrounded Owlianorashan, the inhabitants of which repulsed the attack, killing 100 men.
A body of infantry and Cossacks who were besieged in the village of Khulundian also beat off the insurgents, taking 870 prisoners and capturing a quantity of arms and a black standard.
Mussulman proclamations were found exhorting the Sunnites and Shiites to combine for a common struggle. The agitation is spreading to other districts of the province of Erivan.
At Hadjivar the altar in a church was overturned and a priest was killed. At Yarimdja the holy relics were stolen, and at Badamlu 800 Christians and a priest were converted by force to Islamism, eleven young boys were mutilated and the church was transformed into a mosque. At Djagrakh women are stated to have been outraged before the eyes of their husbands and sons, while 37 men were beheaded in the presence of their wives and children.
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