Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1915 — 12,000 TURKS FALL [ARTICLE]

12,000 TURKS FALL

RUSSIANS DEFEAT TROOPS WHO BUTCHERED CHRISTIANS. Czar's Soldiers Inflict Heavy Losses on Sultan’s Forces in Persia— Torpedo Boat Sunk. Tabriz, Persia, April 2. —Russians defeated the Turks in a sanguinary battle at Atkutur, north of Dilman, in northwestern Persia, on March 25. The Turks lost 12,000 in killed, wounded and prisoners, ap well as many guns. Preceding the reoccupation by the Russians of Saimac Plains, the Azerbaijan province, northwest of Urumigh, hundreds of native Christians were rounded up by the Turks in the village of Haftdewan and massacred. The Russians on entering the village found 7?0 bodies, mostly naked and mutilated. The recovery of bodies from wells, pools and ditches and their burial kept 300 men busy for three days. Some of>he victims had been shoL In other cases they were bound to ladders and their heads protruding through were hacked off. Eyes were gouged out and limbs chopped off. A general massacre of the 10,000 or 15,000 Christians remaining in Urtimiah is expected unless it should be averted by orders from Constantinople. Verbal messages from Urumiah confirm earlier reports that more than 800 persons already have been killed in that neighborhood and that more than 2,000 have died of disease. These messages also confirm reports of the maltreatment of Rev. Dr. E. T. Allen, an missionary at Urumiah. Athens, April 2. —Owing to the insistence of Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey, members of the British telephone staff, who had been detained at Kuleli Burgas, have been allowed to return to Constantinople. On Sunday the Russian fleet sank one Turkish torpedo boat and damaged another off the Bosporus. Constantinople again is full of soldiers.