ARMENIANS BEING EXTERMINATED BY THE TURKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16020, 11 September 1915, Page 7

ARMENIANS BEING EXTERMINATED BY THE TURKS.

THOUSANDS BURNT ALIVE IN ONE VILLAGE. « ,-. .- •■ ■ ■- — u "- r ' j■■ SURROUNDED BY CORDON OF MACHINE-GUNS. (Received September 10, 8 p.m.) London September-.^. The correspondent at Mitylene of the London Daily Telegraph gives horrible details of the massacres of Armenians in Asia Minor. He says it is the fixed Turkish policy to exterminate the Armenian population. In a village 2000 households, exclusively Armenian, -were, exterminated with diabolical cruelty. A squad of gendarmes were first sent to order the inhabitants to evacuate the village. The Armenians remained. Two hundred soldiers followed to compel obedience. - The Armenians resisted, fought, and defeated the soldiers, who fled. Five battalions next arrived with machine-guns and established a cordon round the village. Soldiers with torches were sent to set fire to the buildings. Soon the conflagration was fanned by the brisk breeze. The miserable inhabitants, men, women, and children, were burnt alive. Those endeavouring to escape were shot. Only four escaped. The Turkish method throughout the village is to separate .the men, compelling ttte young men to fight. They sell the young women to harems and send the old men and women and the children into the uninhabited interior, where they are left to a slow death by hunger and exposure. When an appeal was made to German officials at Constantinople they answered that they could not interfere. After all, it was war, they said.