"Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew. But they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading Eritrean soldiers. Those memories haunt a deacon at the country’s most sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local faithful believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant is housed."

Source: Associated Press

‘Horrible’: Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city

By CARA ANNA

An elderly woman who fled to the city of Axum in the Tigray region of Ethiopia to seek safety sits with her head bandaged after being wounded during an attack on the city, Monday, Nov. 30, 2020. She later died of her wounds. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre, at the sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum. (AP Photo)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew. But they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading Eritrean soldiers.

Those memories haunt a deacon at the country’s most sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local faithful believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant is housed. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, the deacon and other witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre.

For weeks, rumors circulated that something ghastly had occurred at the Church of St. Mary of Zion in late November, with estimates of several hundred people killed. But with Tigray cut off from the world and journalists blocked from entering, little could be verified as Ethiopian and allied fighters pursued the Tigray region’s fugitive leaders.

The deacon, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains in Axum, said he helped count the bodies — or what was left after hyenas fed. He gathered victims’ identity cards and assisted with burials in mass graves.

He believes some 800 people were killed that weekend at the church and around the city, and that thousands in Axum have died in all. The killing continues: On the day he spoke to the AP last week he said he had buried three people.

“If we go to the rural areas, the situation is much worse,” the deacon said.

The atrocities of the Tigray conflict have occurred in the shadows. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for making peace with neighboring Eritrea, announced the fighting as the world focused on the U.S. election. He accused Tigray’s regional forces, whose leaders dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades before he took office, of attacking the Ethiopian military. Tigray’s leaders called it self-defense after months of tensions.

While the world clamors for access to Tigray to investigate suspected atrocities on all sides and deliver aid to millions of hungry people, the prime minister has rejected outside “interference.” He declared victory in late November and said no civilians had been killed. His government denies the presence of thousands of soldiers from Eritrea, long an enemy of the Tigray leaders.

Ethiopia’s narrative, however, has crumbled as witnesses like the deacon emerge. The official overseeing Tigray’s state of emergency, Redwan Hussein, didn’t respond to questions.

Axum, with its ancient ruins and churches, holds major significance for the Ethiopian Orthodox faithful, who believe that the Ark of the Covenant, built to hold the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, is located there.

“If you attack Axum, you attack first of all the identity of Orthodox Tigrayans but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” said Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian who specializes in the region. “Axum itself is regarded as a church in the local tradition, ‘Axum Zion.’”

In a normal year, thousands of people would have gathered at the Zion church in late November to celebrate the day Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant was brought there after it disappeared from Jerusalem in ancient times.

Instead, the church had become a refuge for people who fled the fighting elsewhere in Tigray. They sheltered there as worship services were underway two days before the anniversary.

Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers had arrived in Axum more than a week earlier, with heavy bombardment. But on Nov. 28 the Eritrean soldiers returned in force to hunt down members of the local militia who had mobilized against them in Axum and nearby communities.

The deacon recalled soldiers bursting into the church, cornering and dragging out worshippers and shooting at those who fled.

“I escaped by chance with a priest,” he said. “As we entered the street, we could hear gunfire all over.” They kept running, stumbling over the dead and wounded along with others trying to find places to hide.

Most of the hundreds of victims were killed that day, he said, but the shooting and looting continued the following day.

“They started to kill people who were moving from church to home or home to home, simply because they were on the street,” another witness, visiting university lecturer Getu Mak, told the AP. “It was a horrible act to see.” He watched the fighting from his hotel room, then ventured out as it eased.

“On every corner, almost, there was a body,” he said. “People were crying in every home.”

Another witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said soldiers killed a man at his home near the Zion church. “How can I tell you? So many dead,” said the man, who has since escaped to the Tigray capital, Mekele.

After the killings in Axum came an uneasy period with soldiers roaming the streets and families searching for loved ones. At night, hyenas descended from nearby hills.

The city began to smell of death as some bodies went untouched for days.

“I saw a horse cart carrying around 20 bodies to the church, but Eritrean soldiers stopped them and told people to throw them back on the street,” said Getu, the university lecturer.

Finally, when the soldiers left the city to pursue other fighters, residents mobilized to bury the bodies, the deacon said.

“We could not do a formal burial,” he said. “We buried them en masse” in graves near the Zion church and others.

Some of the dead were among the hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray displaced by the conflict and not known to Axum residents. Their identity cards were collected in churches, where they await the discovery of loved ones.

The deacon said residents believe the Eritrean soldiers were taking revenge for the two-decade border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea that played out nearby and ended after Abiy became prime minister. Some of the soldiers told residents they had been instructed to kill people as young as 12, he said.

Another witness, a 39-year-old who gave only his first name, Mhretab, and escaped weeks ago to the United States, asserted that Ethiopian federal police did nothing to rein in the Eritrean soldiers.

“I said to them, ’Listen, you’re Ethiopian, they’re destroying Ethiopian cities. How is this possible?‴ Mhretab recalled.

”They said, ‘What can we do? This shouldn’t have happened from the beginning. This is from above,’” indicating that it had been decided by senior officials, he said.

He said he ferried bodies to a mass grave by the Zion church and estimated that he saw 300 to 400 there.

The deacon believes that the Eritrean soldiers, in their hunt for Tigray fighters, have killed thousands more people in villages outside Axum. “When they fight and lose, they take revenge on the farmers and kill everyone they can find,” he said. “This is what we’ve seen in the past three months.”

Getu echoed that belief, citing his uncle, who survived such a rural confrontation.

The deacon has not gone to the villages outside Axum. His work remains with his church, where services continue even as he says the Tigray conflict is as fierce as ever.

“We’re also protecting the church,” he said. “Even now, I’m talking to you from there. We are not armed. What we do is mostly watching. And, of course, praying that God protects us.”

News and Press Release Source 

• Qatar Red Crescent
 

 Posted 17 Feb 2021 Originally published 17 Feb 2021

February 17th, 2021 ― Doha: The representation office of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) in Sudan has completed Phase 1 of an emergency response to the recent influx of Ethiopian refugees from the war-ravaged Tigray Region of Ethiopia.

Food and nonfood aid was distributed to thousands of refugees facing severe conditions at the Tunaydbah refugee camp, Gadarif State.

The distributions included 2,500 food parcels, each containing 44 kg of food items like flour, rice, lentils, tea, salt, and vegetable oil, as well as 2,000 hygiene kits. In total, these provisions were received by 4,500 refugee families, or an average of 27,000 beneficiaries.

These were part of Phase 1 of the project, which involves multiple sectors, at a total cost of QR 6,681,818. It is planned to distribute another 1,000 food parcels, to be shipped from Qatar later this month, sending the overall number of food parcels to 3,500.

Over the coming period, Phase 2 will be initiated to distribute 2,180 relief kits (kitchenware, blankets, soap, jerry canes, water storage containers, tarpaulins, and washing powder. In relation to water and sanitation, 300 permanent toilets will be delivered and installed. In partnership with the Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS), the camp’s health center will be furnished and operated to offer primary health care services.

Dr. Awadallah Hamdan, Head of QRCS’s office in Sudan, said the organization would be always there for Sudan. The State of Qatar, he asserted, will continue to support the Ethiopian refugees in Sudan with diverse relief interventions. QRCS has already responded to many disasters in the country, including the flash flooding and COVID-19. It works together with SRCS on large-scale health and development projects in Darfur and many other states.

Al-Sayed Abdulazeem, SRCS’s manager of the Tunaydbah refugee camp, commended the diversity and size of the food parcels provided by QRCS for the Ethiopian refugees, compared to other humanitarian providers. He described the aid as “timely to alleviate the suffering of the beneficiaries”.

Eng. Abdulmoneim Othman, the camp’s manager from Sudan’s Commission of Refugees (COR), praised QRCS’s efforts and interventions and promised to offer all possible support to facilitate their work.

The Ethiopian refugees at the camp appreciated the ongoing relief aid from QRCS, which reflected on their smiling faces and thankful words as they happily received the relief items.

Over the past few months, Ethiopian refugees have been displaced by the violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. The latest estimates issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) indicate 61,209 registered refugees. $157 million is needed to respond to the urgent needs of up to 115,000 refugees and 22,000 host communities in Sudan and Djibouti until June 2021.

Gaps remain in all sectors, from water, sanitation, and hygiene to health facilities, food, shelter, protection response, especially youth protection activities, and psychosocial support. Fuel shortages, limited numbers of vehicles, and limited road access are also posing a challenge to the relocation of the new arrivals, as well as the provision of supplies to the different sites. There is a dire need of energy, especially alternative cooking energy.