Massacre of Haftevan

The Haftevan massacre (Syriac:  ܛܘܐ ܕܗܦܬܒ) was a massacre carried out in 1915 against the Assyrian and Armenian people in World War I, as part of the Sayfo and Armenian genocide. The massacre was carried out by Ottoman forces, assisted by Kurdish collaborators, who attacked the Assyrian village of Haftevan in Qajar Iran.

Massacre

In 1915, the Kurdish Shikak Tribe together with the Ottoman Army, had organized the massacre in Haftevan during February of 1915, which led to the deaths of around 700–800 Armenians and Assyrians. The massacre was commited on the orders of Djevdet Bey and Kurdish tribesmen under the command of Simko Shikak, who also helped in the massacre. Russian Army commander K. Matikyan reported seeing "with my own eyes hundreds of mangled corpses in pits, stinking from infection, lying in the open. I saw headless corpses, chopped off by axes, hands, legs, piles of heads, corpses crushed under rocks from fallen walls". According to historian David Gaunt, "This was where the Ottoman soldiers learned to execute unarmed noncombatant Christians", leading to the Armenian genocide and Assyrian genocide.

References

Category:Massacres