The 1896 Ottoman Bank takeover was perpetrated by an Armenian group armed with pistols , grenades , dynamite and hand-held bombs against the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul . The seizure of the bank lasted 14 hours , resulting in the deaths of 10 of the Armenian men and Ottoman soldiers . The Ottoman reaction to takeover saw further massacres and pogroms of the several thousand Armenians living in Constantinople and Sultan Abdul Hamid II threatening to level the entire building itself . However , intervention on part of the European diplomats in the city managed to persuade the men to give , assigning safe passage to the survivors to France . Despite the level of violence the incident had wrought , the takeover was reported positively in the European press , praising the men for their courage and the objectives they attempted to accomplish . The years between 1894 and 1896 ended , with estimates of the dead ranging from 80,000 to 300,000 . The Hamidian massacres are named for Sultan Abdul Hamid II , whose efforts to reinforce the territorial integrity of the embattled Ottoman Empire resulted in the massacres
Hamidian massacres
Hamidian massacres
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire