The people were murdered in what was described as Soviet reprisals against civilians for anti-communist resistance members and their military actions aimed against the Red Army.

When a Red Army unit entered the town with a population of about 10,000[1] to search for resistance members, several villagers and armed combatants hid in a qanat, an underground irrigation canal.

[3] When one man emerged from the stairway, contradicting the elders, the Russian commander ordered that all the people under ground come out.

[3] When the people below refused, the Russian officials poured a flammable liquid through three vertical well shafts[1] that lead to the qanat,[2] presumed to be a mix of gasoline, pentrite and trinitrotoluene,[4] to rout them out.

[1] The Soviet Army then fired with machine guns at the entrances, causing massive explosions of the canals.