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At least 800 people were reportedly killed in Ethiopia as worshipers and soldiers risked their lives to protect what Christians say is the holy Ark of the Covenant from the local militia.
Ethiopian Christians claim that the ark, the wooden chest built to hold the Ten Commandments of Moses, is kept safe in a chapel in the northern holy city of Axum in the Tigray region.
The battle between Ethiopian soldiers and rebel fighters happened in the fall, The Sunday Times reported, but is only being reported now.
“When people heard the shooting, they ran to the church to support the priests and other people who were there protecting the ark,” Getu Mak, a lecturer at the local university, told The Times.
“Certainly some of them were killed for doing that.”
Little was known about the deadly siege since Tigray is cut off from the world and journalists have been blocked from entering the region.
A Deacon residing in Axum told the Associated Press that he helped count the bodies, collected identification cards from the victims and helped with mass grave burials.
He believes that some 800 people died in the church and around the city.
“If you attack Axum, you attack first the identity of the Orthodox Tigrayans, but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian who specializes in the region, told AP.
With pole cables
