After a week of silence, 850 soldiers from regiments of the Ottoman Army arrived to the city on April 25. Shots were fired to the tents that soldiers set at the campground, and a rumor immediately spread that the Armenians had opened fire from a church tower. Without even investigating any falsity of the rumor, the military commander Mustafa Remzi Pasha directed soldiers, together with the bashi-bazouks, towards Armenian quarters and for three days; shot people, destroyed buildings and burned down Christian neighborhoods. Pogroms of 25–27 April were much larger than the 14–17 April clashes, and the casualties were almost all Christian.