A day after the joyous celebration of a religious festival, mass funerals were held in the small Ethiopian town of Arerti for the 36 people killed when scaffolding inside an Orthodox Christian church collapsed.
Hundreds of mourners walked with coffins draped in colorful cloth into the compound of a nearby church while clerics conducted burial rituals following the disaster at St Mariam Church.
Among them was 22-year-old Fikre Tilahun, who told the BBC that he had lost his mother in the tragedy. It's difficult to lose your mother, very difficult, he said.
Although the church is still under construction, people had gathered in the building on Wednesday during the annual Orthodox Christian celebration of St Mariam. Eyewitness Gebreweld Tesfaye told the BBC that a sizable number of the worshippers decided to climb onto the makeshift scaffolding to view a newly painted mural on the church ceiling when disaster struck.
The staircase was entirely wooden, and there were many people moving upstairs at the time. As the congregants were going, the wooden structure gave way, leading to the collapse, Mr. Gebreweld said.
Other eyewitnesses expressed that chaos ensued as people scattered in panic or tried to save lives of those trapped beneath the rubble.
Mr. Fikre recounted his frantic search for his mother, stating he rushed to the church and then to a nearby health center, only to discover later that her body was at the hospital. She was among the 36 confirmed dead, with emergency services warning that the death toll could rise as many of the approximately 200 injured were critically hurt.
The archbishop of the local diocese, Megabi Hadis Nekatibeb, described the incident as incredibly tragic and heart-breaking. The Ethiopian government has expressed condolences to the families of the victims and underscored the pressing need for improved safety regulations on construction sites, a concern that has been longstanding due to frequent accidents.
