ARMENIAN MASSACRES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 285, 11 May 1915, Page 8

ARMENIAN MASSACRES.

SCENES OF BUTCHERY. "BLOOD-SOAKED COUNTYSIDE." The honorary secretary of the Armenian Red Cross and Refugee lund in London has received appalling accounts of the condition of Armenia, taken from newspapers in the Caucasus. The whole plain of Klashberd is said to be covered with the corpses of men, women and children, frozen in congealed pools of their own blood. Women and children still half-alive creep from under the heaps of corpses, from the ruins of houses, from stacks of corn and hay, and out of wells, to tell the story of what took place. '•When the Russian forces retreated," they said. "Kurdish Hamidiehs fell upon us and plundered us, and then shut us all up in the mosque. We did not know what was going to happen until they began to take our husbands anil brothers out one by one to kill them behind the door. A great sound of sobbing arose, and we all fell on the necks of our loved ones until their turn came. So they k'lled all, one after another, from the old men down to lioys of ten. All the Kurds then poured into the mosque, and divided our little boys between them, to be brought up as Mahommeda-ns. After having made us women and girls go through untold agoni#s, they stripped us all of our clothing and made us stand around the walls. The Kurds came to us, and selected as many 'WomAi as thoy wanted, placed them on horses, and took them away beyond those white mountains. Those who resisted were beaten mercilessly. Only old women and babies were left in the mosque."

©r. Derderian. the writer of the article in the Tiflis Horizon, quoted above, adds: "The sight of these half-alive women and babies was even more heartrending than the sight of those mangled bodies scattered over the blood-soaked countryside. The situation is crftical and agonising. . . . We appeal to our brothers and sisters living safely and happily in distant land not to withhold any assistance that they are able to send to tfhese naked, hungry, orphaned infants out in the wilds. Jfelp them,''