At least 800 people were reportedly killed in Ethiopia because worshipers and soldiers risked their lives to protect the Christians there, the sacred ark of the covenant of the local militia.
Ethiopian Christians claim that the Ark – the wooden coffin built to keep the Ten Commandments of Moses – is kept safe in a chapel in the holy northern city of Axum in the Tigray region.
The fighting between Ethiopian soldiers and rebel fighters took place in the fall, reports The Sunday Times, but it is only now being reported.
“When people heard the shooting, they ran to the church to support the priests and others who were there to protect the ark,” Getu Mak, a local university lecturer, told The Times.
“Some of them must have been killed because they did.”
Little was known about the deadly siege since Tigray was cut off from the world and journalists entered the area.
A deacon in Axum told the Associated Press he helped count the bodies, collected victims’ identity cards and helped with mass burials.
He believes an estimated 800 people died at the church and in the city.
“When you attack Axum, you first attack the identity of Orthodox Tigrayans, but also all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” Wolbert Smidt, an ethnologist specializing in the region, told the AP.
With Post threads