ll
held on the river.

On March 20, 1915, Petrograd announced that the Russian advance to the
sea had deprived the enemy of all means of operating in the
Transchorokh region or of transporting troops and munitions to
Erzerum, and that the Turks had been put to flight near Olti. The road
between Archava and Khopa, to the eastward, was strongly defended by
the Turks in a series of stubbornly contested battles. The Russian
advance created a panic throughout the Chorokh Valley; the inhabitants
fled to the mountains, abandoning farms and villages. The mountain
heights in the district of Ardanuch, however, were strongly fortified
and still in Turkish possession. These fortifications had been built
under German supervision, and the defense thereof was conducted by a
German officer.

Hostilities were resumed in Persia during the last week in March,
1915, and on the 25th the Russians defeated the Turks in a violent,
sanguinary battle at Atkutur, north of Bilman in northwestern Persia.
The Turks were stated to have lost 12,000 in killed, wounded, and
prisoners, as well as many guns. Preceding the Russian occupation of
Salmac Plains in Azerbaijan province, northwest of Urumiah, hundreds
of native Christians were rounded up by the Turks in the village of
Haftdewan and massacred. Many of them were dragged out from the homes
of friendly Mohammedans, who tried to hide them. The Russians on
entering the village found 720 bodies, mostly naked and mutilated. The
recovery of bodies from wells, pools, and ditches, and their interment
kept 300 men busy for three days. The wailing of women intensified the
horror of the scene. Surviving widows who were able to identify the
bodies of their husbands insisted upon digging graves and burying the
bodies. "Some of the victims had been shot. In other cases they were
bound to ladders, and their heads, protruding through, were hacked
off. Eyes were gouged out and limbs chopped off."

Messages from Urumiah confirmed earlier reports that more than 800
persons had already been killed in the neighborhood, and that more
than 2,000 had died of disease.

A dispatch from Tiflis, Transcaucasia, dated April 24, 1915, stated
that refugees who had reached the Russian line reported that the
massacre of Armenians was being continued on an even greater scale.
All the inhabitants of ten villages near Van were stated to have been
killed. On being advised of massacres at Erzerum, Berjan, and Zeitun,
and of the co