On 24th April 1915 the Turkish Minister of the Interior ordered liquidation of the Armenians on the pretext that they had committed treason against Turkey.

The events started to develop rapidly: On 15th May several Armenians were arrested and imprisoned. On 3rd June Archbishop Maloyan was arrested and taken to prison along with 50 members of the church community. Within the next few days several hundreds of Christians and about 50 priests were imprisoned only in this town.

In the first days of June about 1600 Christians were deported from the town. They were forced to walk tied together with ropes, their hands in chains. After a six-hour march they arrived in a certain Kurdish village. There the governmental order was read out to them saying that (as Christians) they were sentenced to death. Those who would convert to Islam could go back home unharmed. Bishop Maloyan answered on behalf of all: “We are in your hands, but we will die for Christ.” After that they were brutally massacred and their bodies were thrown into pits.

The number of Armenian Christians massacred by the Turkish soldiers in 1915 is estimated at 1.5 million.