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But no one was allowed to bury the dead, the advancing Eritrean soldiers who intervened in the war in the rebel Tigray region of Ethiopia decided. This is what eyewitnesses tell the AP news agency.
After three months of conflict and hostilities, the Tigray province telecommunications service is being established. Several witnesses, including a deacon from the country’s holiest Orthodox church in Axum, have given the AP a detailed account of events that may have been the deadliest massacre of the war.
Rumors have circulated for many weeks that something terrible had happened in the church of Santa Maria de Sion at the end of November. Hundreds of people are said to have died. But Tigray was isolated from the rest of the world, and the press was unable to bring up confirmed reports of a war situation in which Ethiopian government forces and their allies were looking for leaders from Tigray province.
Identification card collected
The deacon who tells the AP about this is still in the church in Axum and will be anonymous. It is said that he helped gather and count the dead. He took care of the identity cards and helped deposit the bodies in mass graves.
The auxiliary priest believes that some 800 people died that weekend in the church and elsewhere in the city, but that the death toll during the war reached several thousand. And the killings continue. Before the conversation with the AP, the deacon had buried three people who had been found dead.
– And in the field, the situation is even worse, he says.
The atrocities during the Tigray offensive have taken place in secret. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who received the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with neighboring Eritrea, announced the offensive against the rogue province as the world’s attention turned to the US election campaign.
He accused the Tigray leaders of launching attacks against Ethiopian forces. Tigray’s management said it was a matter of self-defense after months of tension and provocation.
Intervention
Various organizations of various kinds have demanded access to Tigray to investigate allegations of abuse from both sides and to help millions of people in emergency situations. The Prime Minister rejects this as foreign interference. He declared victory over the rebels in November and claimed that no civilians had lost their lives.
His government also rejected allegations that several thousand soldiers had moved from Eritrea, a neighboring country with a long-standing hostile relationship with the Tigray leaders.
But Ethiopia’s version of what happened begins to crack when witnesses, such as the aforementioned deacon, present their stories. The head of the state of emergency in Tigray, Redwan Hussein, declined to respond to questions from the AP about the acts of war.
Ark of the covenant
In the city of Axum, there are ancient ruins and churches that are of great importance to the Ethiopian Orthodox believers. The ark of the biblical covenant, an elaborate coffin that the Jews used to hold the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, is said to be found at Axum.
“If you attack Axum, you are attacking the identity of everyone in Tigray, but also of all the Orthodox believers in Ethiopia,” said Wolbert Smidt, who specializes in ethnic and cultural issues in the Horn of Africa region.
In a normal year, thousands of people would have gathered at the Church of Zion in late November to celebrate the appearance of the Ark of the Covenant after it disappeared from ancient Jerusalem. Rather, the church became a haven for people fleeing hostilities in other areas of Tigray.
Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers had already entered Axum a week earlier, after heavy bombardment. But on November 28, Eritrean forces, according to witnesses, turned up in great numbers to pursue members of the local militia who had mobilized against them in Axum and nearby communities.
Abuse
The deacon says that the soldiers stormed the church, gathered the believers and expelled them. Those who tried to flee were shot.
– I dated another priest. When we went outside, we heard gunshots everywhere. We fled, but encountered the dead and wounded in the streets. Among the many hundreds killed, most were shot on the first day. But the shooting and looting continued the next day.
After the violence in Axum came a turbulent period, where soldiers roamed the streets and shot random people outside. The bodies started to stink, as the Eritreans did not allow burials.
– I saw a car with 20 bodies thrown together. Eritrean soldiers stopped the car and asked the man to dump the bodies onto the street, says guest lecturer Getu Mak, who saw cruel scenes from his hotel window.
Eventually, the soldiers left the city and continued hunting militiamen elsewhere. The inhabitants gathered the dead. Many were visiting, fleeing hostilities elsewhere in Tigray. The badges were collected and the deacon is waiting for someone to find out the fate of the owners.
– Formal funerals were impossible. We have to use mass graves, says the deacon.
