Massacre in Ethiopia’s holiest city where the Ark of the Covenant is located: they believe there could be up to 800 dead

Bodies with gunshot wounds remained in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, locals listened in horror to hyenas feeding on the corpses of people they knew. But the invading Eritrean soldiers forbade them to bury their dead.

These memories haunt a deacon in the country’s holiest Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local devotees believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant (the gold-covered wooden chest that according to Jewish tradition holds the tablets) is located. Of the Ten Commandments). . As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumed telephone service after three months of conflict, the deacon and other witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of this it could be their deadliest massacre.

For weeks, rumors circulated that something appalling had happened at the Church of Saint Mary of Sion in late November, with estimates of several hundred dead. But with Tigray cut off from the world and journalists barred from entering, little could be verified as Ethiopian and allied fighters stalked the fugitive leaders in the Tigray region.

The deacon, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he stays in Axum, said he helped count the bodies, or what was left after the hyenas fed. He collected ID cards from victims and helped with mass burials.

He thinks about 800 people died this weekend in and around the city church, and that thousands in Axum died in all. The killing continues: On the day he spoke to the PA last week, he said he had buried three people.

“If we go to rural areas, the situation is much worse”said the deacon.

The atrocities of the Tigray conflict occurred in the shadows. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with neighboring Eritrea, announced the fight as the world focused on the US election. He accused the Tigray regional forces, whose leaders ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before he took office, of attacking the Ethiopian army. Tigray leaders called it self-defense after months of tension.

As the world demands access to Tigray to investigate alleged atrocities on all sides and deliver aid to millions of starving people, the prime minister has rejected outside “interference”. Victory was declared in late November and said civilians had not been killed. His government denies the presence of thousands of Eritrean soldiers, long enemies of the Tigray leaders.

However, the Ethiopian narrative has collapsed as witnesses such as the deacon emerge. The Foreign Ministry acknowledged on Thursday that “Rape, looting, cruel and intentional mass murder” can occur in a conflict where “many are illegally armed”. His statement accused the Tigray forces of leaving the region “vulnerable” and said any serious crimes would be investigated. He did not mention the Eritrean soldiers.

Axum, with its ancient ruins and churches, is of great importance to the Ethiopian Orthodox faithful, who They believe that the Ark of the Covenant, built to contain the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, is there.

“If you attack Axum, you first attack the identity of the Orthodox Tigrayans, but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians”, said Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian specializing in the region. “Axum itself is considered a church in the local tradition,” Axum Zion “.”

In a normal year, thousands of people would have gathered at the Zion Church at the end of November to celebrate the day Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant was brought there after its disappearance from Jerusalem in ancient times.

Instead, the church had become a refuge for people who had fled fighting elsewhere in Tigray. They took refuge there when the services were held two days before the anniversary.

Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers had reached Axum more than a week earlier, with heavy shelling. But on November 28, Eritrean soldiers returned in force to pursue members of the local militia who had mobilized against them in Axum and in neighboring communities.

The deacon recalled that the soldiers broke into the church, cornering and dragging the faithful and shooting those who were fleeing.

“I accidentally ran away with a priest,” he says. “When we entered the street, we heard gunshots everywhere.” They continued to run, stumbling over the dead and injured with others trying to find places to hide.

Most of the hundreds of victims died that day, he said, but the shooting and looting continued the next day.

“They started killing people who moved from church to house or from house to house, just because they were on the street ”, Another witness, visiting university professor Getu Mak, told the AP. “It was a horrible act to watch.” He watched the fight from his hotel room, then ventured out, calming down.

“In almost every corner there was a body “, He said. “People were crying in every house. “

Another witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said soldiers killed a man at his home near Zion Church. “How can I tell you? So many dead”, said the man, who has since escaped to Tigray’s capital, Mekele.

After the Aksum assassinations came an uncomfortable time with soldiers roaming the streets and families searching for their loved ones. At night, the hyenas descended from the nearby hills.

The city began to smell of death as some bodies remained intact for days.

“I saw a horse cart carrying about 20 bodies to the church, but the Eritrean soldiers stopped them and told people to throw them in the street,” said Getu, the university professor.

Witnesses in other parts of Tigray said they were unable to bury the bodies, calling it a further insult. They say the soldiers tell them that “No one cried for our fighters, so why should we let them cry?”

Finally, when the soldiers left town to pursue other fighters, neighbors mobilized to bury the bodies, the deacon said.

“We couldn’t do an official burial,” he said. We “buried them en masse” in graves near the Church of Zion and others.

Some of the dead were among the hundreds of thousands displaced by the conflict in Tigray and unknown to the inhabitants of Axum. Their identity cards were recovered from churches, where they await the discovery of their relatives.

The deacon said residents believed Eritrean soldiers were getting revenge for the two-decade Ethiopia-Eritrea border war that developed nearby and ended after Abiy became prime minister. Some of the soldiers told locals that they had been instructed to kill people as young as 12, he said.

Another witness, a 39-year-old man who only gave his first name, Mhretab, and escaped to the United States weeks ago, claimed that the Ethiopian federal police did nothing to arrest the Eritrean soldiers.

“I said to them, ‘Listen, you are Ethiopians, you are destroying Ethiopian cities. How is it possible? ‴ Mhretab remembered.

“They said, ‘What can we do? It shouldn’t have happened from the start. It’s from above ”, indicating that this had been decided by senior officials, he said.

He said that he transported the bodies to a mass grave next to the church in Zion and estimated that he had seen 300 to 400.

The deacon believes that Eritrean soldiers, in their search for tabby fighters, have killed thousands more in villages outside of Aksum. “When they fight and lose, they take revenge on the farmers and kill anyone they find, ”he said. “This is what we have seen over the past three months.”

Getu echoed this belief, citing his uncle, who survived such a rural confrontation.

The deacon did not go to the villages outside of Aksum. His work stays with his church, where services continue even when he says the Tigray conflict is fiercer than ever.

“We are also protecting the church,” he said.. “Even now I’m talking to you from there. We are not armed. What we do is mostly watch. And, of course, pray that God will protect us ”.

* With AP information

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