One man, Hagob Levonian, was killed in the blast which went off prematurely as he was setting the car bomb while Levon Demirian waited in a car nearby. The body of Levonian was found "scattered in hundreds of pieces". The men were members of a group known as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and planned the bombing as a political protest in retaliation for the genocide of the Armenians in 1915 in Turkey.[5]