MAI KADRA, ETHIOPIA - MARCH 05: Bizuayehu Tesfa, 28, of Mai Kadra, recounts her story of surviving last November's attacks at Mai Kadra while speaking to a journalist at Abune Aregawi Church on March 5, 2021. Bizuayeha recounts: "On November 9 my Tigrayan neighbor named Axumite told us to stay home and lock ourselves inside. After a moment a group of youths who sang a song " አድጊ አምሃራይ ይውጣ" meaning "let every Amhara leave" and started burning our homes. My home was in flames while I was inside with my baby and with other 3 Amhara youths. Those who were inside with me broke out of the back of the house and saved me and my baby girl." According to interviews conducted in recent days with several dozen victims, witnesses and local officials, around 1,300 ethnic Amharas were killed during a series of attacks by the Samri TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) Youth Group, TPLF militia and local Tigrayan police, from November 6 to November 10, 2020. Over the course of four days, Samri youth from several towns in Tigray, in addition to TPLF militia and local police, killed farm workers on farms owned by TPLF-affiliated farmer/investors before moving onto Mai Kadra itself, conducting door-to-door searches for ethnic Amharas. Most victims were slashed or hacked; many victims who survived the initial attacks with bladed weapons were shot to death. The violence occurred during a wider conflict between the Ethiopian government and the TPLF that ignited on November 4, 2020, when forces aligned with the TPLF attacked the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) Northern Command headquarters in Mekelle, the capital city of the Tigray region. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images)
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