during the assyrian genocide, which took place in world war i, the ottoman army together with allied kurdish, azeri and arab militias along the iranian-turkish and iranian-iraqi border carried out religiously and ethnically motivated massacres and deportations on unarmed assyrian civilians (and armenians) both in the mountains and on the rich plains, resulting in the death of at least 300,000 assyrians. in 1914 alone, they attacked dozens of villages and drove off all the inhabitants of the district of gawar. the assyrians defended themselves and for a time successfully repelled further attacks under the leadership of agha petros, seizing control of much of the urmia region and defeating ottoman forces and their kurdish, arab and azeri allies in the process. however lack of ammunition and supplies, due mainly to the withdrawal of russia from the war, and the collapse of allied armenian forces led to their downfall. massively outnumbered, surrounded, undersupplied and cut off, the assyrians suffered terrible massacres.