Armed with pistols, grenades, dynamite and hand-held bombs, the seizure of the bank lasted for 14 hours, resulting in the deaths of ten of the Armenian men and Ottoman soldiers. The Ottoman reaction to the takeover saw further massacres and pogroms of 6,000 Armenians living in Constantinople and also Hamid threatening to level the entire building itself.[1] However, intervention on part of the European diplomats in the city managed to persuade the men to give way, assigning safe passage to the survivors to France.