It was reported that at least 800 people died in Ethiopia while the faithful and soldiers risked their lives to protect what Christians there are the sacred Ark of the Covenant of the local militia.
Ethiopian Christians claim that the Ark – the wooden chest built to house the Ten Commandments of Moses – is kept safe in a chapel in the holy city north of Axum, in the Tigray region.
The battle between Ethiopian soldiers and rebel fighters took place in the fall, The Sunday Times reported, but only 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 professor at the local university, told The Times.
“Certainly some of them were killed for doing so.”
Little was known about the deadly siege since Tigray was separated from the world and journalists had been blocked from entering the region.
A deacon living in Axum told the Associated Press that he helped count the bodies, collected victim identification cards and helped with burials in mass graves.
He believes about 800 people died in and around the church.
“If you attack Axum, you first attack the identity of Orthodox tigrayans, but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” Wolbert Smidt, a specialized ethnohistorian in the region, told AP.
With publishing cables