In an out-of-sight war, a massacre comes to light
It was Friday, Jan. 8, the day after Genna, the Ethiopian Orthodox Christmas. Around 2 p.m., Kidane Tesfay heard gunshots near his family’s home and thought of his two brothers, ages 17 and 20, walking outside.
“When I looked through the door’s peephole, I saw them on the ground, their blood spilling out,” he said in an interview. He also saw soldiers wearing mud-flecked green camouflage gear striding up to the door.
“I had to escape,” Tesfay said. “Luckily our house has another entrance. I ran out the back.”
What followed was an hours-long killing rampage, according to accounts from 10 survivors, including Tesfay, as well as from victims’ relatives and friends and activist groups. Ethiopian soldiers went from house to house in Bora, a town in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, and executed more than 160 people.
Done killing, the soldiers stopped families from taking their dead. Only on Sunday — two days after the slaughter — were gravediggers allowed to set about their grim task; one of them buried 26 corpses in the graveyard of the Abune Aregawi Church, survivors said.
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