At least 800 people were killed in Ethiopia while worshipers and soldiers risked their lives to protect what Christians say is the sacred ark of the covenant of the local militia.
Ethiopian Christians say the Ark – the wooden ark built to contain the Ten Commandments of Moses – is being kept safely in a chapel in the holy city of Axum in the north, in the Tigray region.
The battle between Ethiopian soldiers and rebels took place in the fall, the Sunday Times reported, but it is only being reported now.
“When people heard the shooting, they rushed to the church to support the priests and others who were protecting the ark,” Getu Mak, a local university professor, told The Times.
“Certainly some of them were killed for doing this.”
Little is known about the deadly siege since Tigray is cut off from the world and journalists have been prevented from entering the region.
An Axum resident deacon told the Associated Press that he helped count the bodies, collected the victims’ identification cards and helped with burials in mass graves.
He believes that about 800 people were killed in the church and around the city.
“If you attack Axum, you attack primarily the identity of the Orthodox Tigrayans, but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” Wolbert Smidt, an ethno-historian specializing in the region, told the AP.
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