Persia

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 74, 30 March 1915, Page 5

Persia

AN APPALLING MESSAGE.

CRIME AND MASSACRE,

United Press Association. London, March 29

\A Tiflis message says:—North-west Persia is iu an’ appalling condition. Turks and Kurds are massacring Assyrians and ■ Christians. Ur. Packard, of the Presbyterian Board's Foreign M J sifon, 'underwent great personal risk in unfurling the American flag, but saved three thousand • Assyrians. At Gerogtapa all except two hundred were burned in a church. Many sought the protection of the mission station at Urumiah, where seventy Turkish regulars hanged the orthodox bishop, and four of the; clergy. Six refugees were dragged into the French mission station and executed,' despite the tearful pleas of the nuns. Gulphason was the last of 103 villages devastated by the Kurds, who marched the males tied in groups of five to the graveyards, where all werp barbarously murdered, and the young women were enslaved. Twelve thousand Assyrians' are taking refuge in the Caucasus. In all, twenty thousand were'dead and missing.