The villagers in Antsokiya-Gemeza woreda of North Shoa Zone lowered 51 bodies into a mass grave on Saturday. Fifteen of the dead were young girls and boys and ten of them elderly women. The rest were men. All had been shot dead by rebel fighters, during what witnesses described as a “massacre”.

The accounts are another example of gruesome abuses to emerge from the Amhara region, where residents say a massacre was carried out this past weekend by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters.

Residents say the massacre in Anbo Wuha village of Antsokiya-Gemeza woreda was carried out on December 3.  They said after the TPLF forces lost the Mehal Meda and Majete area and were trying to cross the Anbo Wuha village , they were ambushed by local militias, losing some of their fighters. The remaining TPLF forces descend on the village, going door-to-door killing innocent people in retaliation, the witnesses said.

A reporter for Walta Information Center who arrived in the area three days later said he was greeted by the most gruesome sights he had ever seen, bodies scattered all over the ground, most of them in civilian clothing. Mentally ill people were not spared from the attacks, he said.

Selamawit Kassa, State Minister for Communication, said that she was “informed that hundreds of civilians have been slaughtered by TPLF terrorists in North Shoa Antsokiya-Gemeza woreda as well as in Gashena area.”

Amhara civilians in multiple communities have chronciled that the TPLF fighters shot unarmed civilians since the forces entered the Amhara region in July and August. The worst massacres recounted by witnesses have been in Chenna Teklehaymanot where over 200 civilian noncombatants were massacred on mid september, and in Qobo town, where more than 600 people, again noncombatants, were killed in house-to-house “searches’”

The prime minister’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum said on Tuesday the aftermath of TPLF’s occupation of many towns in the Amhara and Afar regions left behind an overwhelming amount of destruction of public and private property as well as loss of many lives.

The spokesperson showed journalists images of the destruction of property in Mezezo, Kasagita, Debre Sina, Shoa Robit, Gashena and Lalibela airport following the liberation of these towns by federal forces. The images depict the devastation and looting of private hotels and properties, public infrastructures, banks, businesses and health facilities.

In addition to the unlawful killings and widespread destruction of houses and villages, there is evidence emerging across many towns of grave atrocities and human right abuses, she said. “In Gashena and North Shewa town of Antsokiya we have reports of mass killings that have been undertaken by TPLF on innocent civilians,” the spokesperson said.

Witnesses said that girls and women have been victims of brutal forms of sexual violence when the towns were occupied by the TPLF forces. Fighters raped women old enough to be their grandmothers, and breastfeeding mothers, residents said. Etaferahu Habetemariam, 34, a resident of Mezezo town of Tarmaber woreda in North Shoa Zone, said that her town was captured by Tigrayn forces for nine days and TPLF soldiers entered into several houses, stealing money, assaulting women and rounding up the men.