More than 500,000 Armenians passed through the Firincilar plain south of Malatya. Arriving convoys, having passed through the plain and approaching the Kahta highlands, would find gorges already filled with corpses from previous convoys—one of the deadliest areas during the genocide. Thousands of Armenians were killed near Lake Hazar, pushed by paramilitary units off the cliffs into valleys from which the only escape was into the lake. Many others were trapped in valleys of tributaries of the Tigris, Euphrates, or Murat River by members of the Special Organization; their bodies were thrown into the river. These corpses arrived in Upper Mesopotamia before the first of the living deportees. Armenian men could be reliably drowned by being tied together back-to-back before being thrown in the water, a method that was not used on women.