The church is located in Aksum, in the country’s Northern region, where the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Ethiopian federal troops, alongside the Amhara militia, have been fighting for months.

The church was attacked by Amhara soldiers, who wanted to steal the Ark of the Covenant and place it in the capital of Ethiopia. Reports like these have become difficult to confirm, given the federal government’s lockdown of communications and travel into and out of Tigray.

A history professor at the University of Toronto explained, “The government and the Eritreans want to wipe out the Tigrayan culture. They think they’re better than the rest of the people in the country. The looting is about destroying and removing the cultural presence of Tigray.” The Tigrayan people are majority Christian, and the Amhara make up the country’s largest Christian-majority ethnic group.

Source: Persecution.org