Template:POTD/2015-04-24
An Armenian woman kneeling beside a dead child in a field during the Armenian Genocide, conducted by the government of the Ottoman Empire. The genocide is conventionally held to have begun on 24 April 1915, when Ottoman authorities arrested and later executed some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. Much of the remaining Armenian population were deported into the deserts of Syria, where most died from starvation, exhaustion, and systematic massacres. The total number of people killed has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million. Though the events are widely recognized as a genocide by historians, the Turkish government rejects such a description.Photograph: American Committee for Relief in the Near East; restoration: MjolnirPants