 Official British sources estimate the total number of all Assyrians killed during August 1933 at around 600 , while Assyrian sources put the figure at 3 @,@ 000 . Historians disagree as to who holds responsibility for ordering the mass killings . Stafford blames Arab nationalists , most prominently Rashid Ali al @-@ Gaylani and Bakr Sidqi . According to him , Iraqi Army officers despised the Assyrians , and Sidqi in particular was vocal of his hate for them . This view was also shared by British officials who recommended to King Faysal not to send him to the north during the crisis . Husry , on the other hand , blamed the Assyrians for starting the crisis and absolved Sidqi from ordering the mass killing in Simele . He hinted that King Faysal I was the authority who might have issued orders to exterminate Assyrian males . Kanan Makiya , a leftist Iraqi historian , presents the actions taken by the military as a manifestation of the nationalist anti @-@ imperialist paranoia which was to culminate with the Ba 'athists ascent to power in the 1960s . <unk> al @-@ Barrak , an Iraqi Ba 'athist historian , puts Sidqi as the author of the whole campaign and the ensuing massacres . For him the events were part of a history of Iraq prior to the true nationalist revolution . 
