Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.[116] Ginsburg and Mathos reached the conclusion, that "As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed."[117] According to other data, many thousands of common Tibetans participated in the rebellion.[3] Declassified Soviet archives provides data that Chinese communists, who received a great assistance in military equipment from the USSR, broadly used Soviet aircraft for bombing monasteries and other punitive operations in Tibet.[98]