Blaming the Jews and communists for the bomb, Romanian troops began reprisals that same evening. By noon of the following day, October 23, 5,000 civilians had been seized and shot, most of them Jews. On the morning of October 23, over 19,000 Jews were assembled in nine gunpowder warehouses at the port, and summarily shot, after which the warehouses were set on fire. Some of the prisoners were burned alive.
That afternoon, over 20,000 were led out of the city in a long column in the direction of Dalnik. When they reached the village, they were tied together in groups of 40–50 people, thrown into an anti-tank ditch and shot. When the Romanians grew concerned that the killing would take too long, they moved the rest of the Jews into four large warehouses in which they made holes for machine guns. The doors were closed and the soldiers fired into the buildings. In order to make sure that all those inside the buildings died, they set fire to three of the buildings, (which were filled mainly with women and children), at 17:00 hours on the following day, October 24. Those who tried to escape through windows or holes in the roofs were shot or met with hand grenades. On October 25, the fourth building, which was filled with men, was shelled. These massacres were carried out under the orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolae Deleanu and Lieutenant-Colonel C. D. Nicolescu. German soldiers also took part in the shooting.
Around 35,000–40,000 of the Jews that remained were moved into the ghetto in the suburb of Slobodka where most of the buildings were destroyed, and left outdoors for ten days, between October 25 and November 3, and many Jews died of exposure
