At least 800 people have been killed in Ethiopia because believers and soldiers risked their lives to protect what Christians there say is the sacred ark of the covenant by the local militia.
Ethiopian Christians claim that the ark – the wooden chest built to keep the Ten Commandments of Moses – is kept safely in a chapel in the holy northern city of Axum in the Tigray region.
The battle between Ethiopian soldiers and rebel fighters took place in the fall, The Sunday Times reported, but it is only reported now.
“When people heard the shots, they ran to the church to support the priests and others 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 so.”
Not much was known about the deadly siege since Tigray was removed from the world and journalists were barred from entering the region.
A deacon living in Axum told the Associated Press that he helped count the bodies, collected victim identification cards and attended funerals in mass graves.
He believes about 800 people have been killed at the church and around the city.
“If you attack Axum, you are attacking first and foremost the identity of Orthodox Tigers, but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian specializing in the region, told AP.
With Post threads