After three days of fierce battles, on April 30, the Turks entered Panagyurishte, which was set on fire by the artillery. All inhabitants, mainly old men and women with small children, who had not managed to run away and hide in the mountains, were massacred. The same fate befell the towns of Klissoura, Strelcha and scores of other settlements in the Sredna Gora mountains. The leaders of the uprising, together with small groups of insurgents, tried to escape to Romania, but most of them fell in ambushes along the long road: Benkovski was killed not far from Teteven, Volov – near the town of Byala. Kableshkov was captured and committed suicide in prison.

Village of Peroushtitsa

The atrocities committed by the bashibozouks in the Fourth revolutionary district in the Rhodope Mountains were still uglier. After several days of fighting bashibozouks and regular troops entered the large village of Peroushtitsa. Hundreds of insurgents and townspeople took position in the church and continued their desperate resistance. When the Turkish artillery began to demolish the church walls, the members of the local committee Kocho Chistemenski and Spas Ginev killed their wives and children, not to allow them to fall into the hands of the Turks, and then committed suicide. Their example was followed by other insurgents. The church and school which were full of people, were set on fire and hundreds of villagers found their death of martyrs in the flames.

The fate of the village of Batak, situated still further within the mountain, was still more terrible. The fierce bashibozouks of the blood-thirsty Ahmed Aga Barutinli massacred the entire population: some 4, 000 people – men, women, old people, children were slain. The walls of the old stone church have preserved to this day the blood stains and traces of the fire, and the museum in Batak houses the chopping logs on which the heads of the defenceless victims were cut off. The bodies of the fighters for Bulgaria's freedom were left unburied. The once flowering village was reduced to rubble and remained for a long time haunted by vultures and ravens.

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