of smaller groups of men soon began. The columns were in Dravograd directed to Maribor or Slovenj Gradec and Celje. On 17 May, the British started the repatriation of Croat internees of the Viktring camp, mostly members of the HOS. The columns marching towards Maribor, where transit camps were set, were moving along the Drava River. During the march, bodies could be seen floating in the Drava and on the banks of the river. The first prisoners arrived in Maribor on 17 May and were placed in transit camps. Other larger columns arrived in the following two days. At the camps, prisoners were sorted based on their unit and year of enlistment. A part of the prisoners were sent on further marches or transported with trains to Celje and Zagreb. The rest were brought by trucks to anti-tank trenches in Tezno near Maribor, with their hands tied with wire, where they were lined up and killed. The killings lasted for several days until the trenches were filled with dead bodies. A total of 1,179 bodies were recovered, with estimates that 15,000 people may have been killed in the Tezno massacre, largely members of the HOS. Among them were also some members of the Montenegrin National Army and POWs of other units. Prisoners directed from Bleiburg to the town of Slovenj Gradec were joined by a large number of refugees that were stuck on the Dravograd-Slovenj Gradec road. Several transit camps were set in the town where prisoners were placed and sorted. Around 1,500 were killed in the nearby village of Žančani. The prisoners were only briefly held in Slovenj Gradec, mostly a day, before they continued their way to Celje. Anyone who stepped out of the column to take a rest or drink water was shot. Those that were too exhausted to continue the march were also shot. In Celje, most of the prisoners were placed in a football yard on the outskirts of the city. The command of the 11th Krajina Division of the 1st Army reported on 17 May that they received 30,000 prisoners. Anti-tank trenches near the Sava River and in the area of Bukovžlak were used for executions. Prisoners were killed in various ways; on one occasion around 100-200 were locked in an enclosed water reservoir. Water was then slowly released until all of them drowned. A column of 40,000 people, consisting primarily of Croat soldiers,