The estimates of the number of Turks in the current Bulgarian territories prior to the Russo-Turkish war of 1878 vary. Major urban centers were with Muslim majority and remained overwhelmingly Muslim well until the 19th century. According to Aubaret, the French Consul in Ruse in 1876 in the Danube Vilayet, which was partly outside modern Bulgaria there were 1,120,000 Muslims of whom 774,000 were Turks and 1,233,500 non-Muslims of whom 1,150,000 were Bulgarian (in comparison, the 1881 Bulgarian census registered 1,345,000 in the smaller area of the Bulgarian principality). According to him in the Rusçuk sancak there were 388,000 Turks and 229,500 Bulgarians, in Varna sancak the Turks outnumbered with 92,800 people the 32,200 Bulgarians there with more contrast. According to census and Salname the Muslims had been dominant in the northeast a century earlier. In 1876 Niš and Sofia sancak were detached from the Danube Villayet, joining the Kosovo Vilayet and Adrianople Vilayet, and 1.100.000 Muslims as well as 1.700.000 non-Muslims lived in this region before the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. As Russian forces and Bulgarian volunteers pushed south in January 1878 they inflicted a welter of atrocities on the local Muslim population. . The Ottoman army has also been accused of attacking Muslim non-combatants and using refugees to shield their retreat. Certainly many perished of hardship during their flight. The number of casualties is uncertain, it is estimated at tens of thousands. The figure of refugees is uncertain too, Professor Richard Crampton estimates it as an exodus of 130,000–150,000 people of whom approximately half returned for an intermediary period encouraged by the Congress of Berlin in 1878, while Dr. Hupchick claims that the refugees were 500,000. Atrocities against the Turks and Pomaks committed by Russian troops and Bulgaria units are also described in the 1878 Rhodope Commission signed by French, Italian, English and Turkish representatives. The Commission points out the burning of 80 Muslim villages after signing the armistice and a number of other war crimes against the Muslim civilian population. The Commission presents the figure of 150,000 refugees in and around the Rhodope Mountains.