Over the next two months the Armenians and Assyrians of the province were targeted in a brutal campaign of extermination and were wiped out by way of wholesale massacres and deportations.[17] He established a "Committee of Inquiry" with the aim of the solution of the "Armenian Question".[18] According to the Venezuelan officer and mercenary Rafael de Nogales, who visited the region in June 1915, Reshid had recently received a three-worded telegram from Talat Pasha to "Burn-Destroy-Kill," an order cited as official government approval of his persecution of the Christian population.[19][20] He is said to have burned 800 Assyrian children alive by himself after enclosing them in a building.[21] Nesimi Bey and Sabit Bey, the governors of the districts of Lice and Sabit, respectively, are both suspected to have been assassinated under the express orders of Reshid for their opposition to the killings.[22] Anywhere between 144,000 and 157,000 Armenians, Assyrians, and other Christians, or 87 to 95% of the province's Christian population, were killed or deported during Reshid's tenure as governor of Diyarbekir.[23]