Horrible : Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city mynorthwest.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mynorthwest.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Since the outbreak of violence in Tigray on 4 November 2020, when the federal Ethiopian government launched a military offensive against the region, there has been a steady increase in reports of human rights violations. These include the killing of scores of civilians and sexual violence. Moreover, as UNICEF’s Executive Director Henrietta Fore has recently pointed out, ‘for 12 weeks, the international humanitarian community has had very limited access to conflict-affected populations across most of Tigray’. This is not accidental, the Ethiopian authorities have blocked the internet and banned journalists to keep foreign observers in the dark. Yet, even at this stage, two points seem clear. The first, and most tragic, is that hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced or are in need of food aid because of the conflict. The second is that Tigray’s cultural heritage has been deliberately damaged or pillaged, even if the exact scale of this attack remains to be fully un
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The injury-plagued life, and now death, of Asmelash Woldeselassie highlights the brutality and cyclical nature of conflicts in Ethiopia s mountainous Tigray region.
Having joined the Tigray People s Liberation Front (TPLF) around the time of its formation in 1975, Asmelash lost his eyesight when he was bombed in his hideout in the Imba Alaje mountain during the war that ended with the guerrilla movement marching into Ethiopia s capital, Addis Ababa, to seize power from the notorious Mengistu Haile Mariam regime in 1991.
Then in 1998, when the TPLF-led government found itself at the centre of a border war with Eritrea, Asmelash lost his left arm in an airstrike on the regional capital, Mekelle.
It has been hidden from view for thousands of years, and its whereabouts never proved. But if the Ark of the Covenant indeed rests in a chapel in northern Ethiopia, this extraordinary religious treasure could be at grave risk from fighting in the area. The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, which reputedly houses the ark – a casket of gilded wood containing stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, according to the Bible – was the scene.