In fact, the Government passed a decree mandating all Armenians to be disarmed and ordered an inquisition for arms in villages, together with open violence. Later in the spring of 1915, the so called ‘final phase’ began: Armenians were firstly imprisoned for a couple of days and then the process of deportation began. The men, were sent in groups tied to one another and forced to march in direction of Baghdad but they were massacred and killed along the journey . The same process was then repeated for the women and children. When the massacres and deportations finally ended around 1918, more than 1.5 million Armenians had been killed and many others had been deported out of the country.