Tafas massacre
The Tafas Massacre was the slaughter of civilians in the Ottoman Syrian town of Tafas following the retreat of the Ottoman Army in an attempt to demoralize the enemy.
Background
Nearing the end of World War I in the autumn of 1918, a retreating Ottoman Army column of roughly two thousand under the high command of Djemal Pasha entered Tafas. Its commander, Sharif Bey, ordered all the people massacred, to demoralize the British and Arab forces in pursuit of the Ottoman Army. The British commander leading the Arab forces, T. E. Lawrence, arrived in the area shortly after the massacre and witnessed bodies mutilated and the majority of the town in ruins.In retaliation for the massacre, Lawrence's troops attacked the withdrawing Turkish columns, and for the first time in the war Lawrence ordered his men to take no prisoners. Around 250 German and Austrian soldiers who had been traveling with the Ottoman troops were captured. When the Arabs discovered one of their men pinned to the ground by two German bayonets, the prisoners were summarily executed by machine guns.
Lawrence wrote in his diary, the basis of his later account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom: