Or let us take a look at some of the collecting camps. At one, described
by an eye-witness, we find that the convoy had arrived after several
months of travel. More than half were already dead, they had been
pillaged by bandits and Kurds seven times. They were forbidden to drink
water when they passed by a stream, three-quarters of the young women
and girls had been kidnapped, the rest were compelled to sleep with the
gendarmes who conducted them. At Osmanieh it was decided to deport the
women and children by train. They lay about the station starving and
fever-stricken. When the train arrived many were jostled on to the line,
and the driver yelled with joy, crying out, 'Did you see how I smashed
them up?'

At another camp typhus broke out; those who died of it were left
unburied, as vouched for by a Turkish officer, in order to increase the
infection....

Urfa was another collecting camp for the Armenians in that district, and
the following account is based on the information of an eye-witness.
Here, before the concentration began, the Armenians living in the town
offered resistance to the Turks, and held out until Fahri Bey, second in
command to Jemal the Great, arrived with artillery, bombarded the town,
and massacred every Armenian there. Quiet being thus restored, the bands
of deported began to arrive. They came by rail or on foot, and, with
the Prussian love of tabulation, were divided into three groups.

The first group consisted of old men, old women, and young children.
They, guarded by gendarmes, were sent marching through the desert to
Deir-el-Zor. Few, if any, ever arrived there, all dying by the way.

The second group, consisting of able-bodied men, was led off in batches