Old photo shows Kenyan massacre victims, not Ethiopians killed by government soldiers
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on June 12, 2023 at 12:51
- 2 min read
- By James OKONG'O, AFP Kenya, AFP Ethiopia
Copyright © AFP 2017-2024. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The post was published on Facebook on May 31, 2023, and has been shared more than 200 times.
Written in Amharic, it translates to: "They massacred the monastery’s monks like this. Will Gojjam people live in peace after experiencing this? Will you feed and help these troops traversing your cities for more attacks? I’m pissed off."
Gojjam is a province in Ethiopia's Amhara region.
The image shows several dead bodies covered in blankets on rocky ground and soldiers with a military truck combing the site.
Monastery massacre
The monastery mention in the post refers to reports of a government-led assault on a rural church purported to have been the base of an armed rebel group.
Various accounts of the alleged battle in early June 2023 claimed that up to 600 people were either killed, injured or dispersed.
The church in question is said to be located in the Debre Elias district of the East Gojjam zone in Amhara.
Images published on government social media accounts (here and here) show a small building in a hilly, wooded area. A few pictures show weapons and dugouts on the property, as well as a group of about a dozen captives wearing civilian clothing.
To date, there have been no verified pictures of the victims of the reported siege that apparently included the use of "heavy weapons".
The picture of bodies in blankets lying on the ground is unrelated to Ethiopia.
Photo from Kenya
Using a reverse image search, AFP Fact Check found that the photo has been online for nearly a decade.
It shows the bodies of victims of an attack in December 2014 on quarry workers near Mandera — a town in northern Kenya on the country’s border with Somalia.
The photo, which has been published in articles by the BBC (archived here) and France24 (archived here), is credited to AFP.
On December 2, 2014, militants from the Somalia-based Al Shabab rebels killed 36 quarry workers in Kenya.
Kenya has suffered several reprisal attacks by the Islamist group since the militants invaded Somalia in 2011. Kenyan forces are part of the African Union troops (archived here) battling Al Shabab in Somalia.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us